Suspected Wartime Killer Arrested in Bosnia

Ex-fighter Maric, known as ‘Nidzo’, was arrested on Tuesday by Bosnia and Herzegovina’s State Investigation and Protection Agency in the village of Borovica in Prozor-Rama in the north of the country after several years on the run.

The state prosecutor said that Maric, who was believed to have been evading capture by hiding in Croatia and slipping into Bosnia secretly from time to time, was disguised as a forest ranger at the time of his arrest.

He was detained on suspicion of participating in the murder, expulsion, torture, illegal imprisonment and abuse of several dozen Bosniak victims from Prozor-Rama in the north of the country in 1992 and 1993.

The Bosnian prosecutor’s office said that he was also suspected of involvement in the murders and forced disappearances of another 11 people, some of whom were elderly and whose killings were particularly brutal.

His arrest, the prosecutor said, was “a message to all suspects hiding from justice that the judiciary and police are looking for them and that they will be prosecuted”.