Your Friday News Dump for the week of December 11-15

Time to dust off some ancient outrage. Remember that horrific slaughter in the Balkans a decade past? Well, a sizeable number of Serbian war criminals slipped into this country as refugees, and some more are here illegally. (Yeah, yeah, I know...all war criminals are here illegally.)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Twenty-six Bosnian Serb refugees are in custody after a series of raids around the United States targeting people who served in Bosnian Serb military units that attacked Muslims. Officials say three others remain at large.

Sixteen of the 29 face criminal charges for concealing their military service when they applied for refugee status in the United States.

A court document says one of them, Nedjo Ikonic, 40, of Greenfield, Wisconsin, "was a commander of a police company that cooperated with and was subordinated to the Army of the Serbian Republic during the July 1995 massacre in Srebrenica."

Units of the Bosnian Serb army are accused of torturing and executing at least 7,000 Muslims in Srebrenica, a United Nations-designated "safe area."

The 16 were indicted on charges of immigration fraud or lying about their Bosnian Serb military background on their immigration applications. They face five to 10 years in prison if convicted.
Thirteen others detained only on administrative immigration violations face deportation.

The arrests by Immigration and Customs Service agents occurred over several days in Florida, Wisconsin, Colorado, Michigan, North Carolina and Ohio, according to Justice Department officials familiar with the operations.

"These cases demonstrate our resolve to identify and prosecute those who enter this country under false pretenses, especially those who hide their military past," said Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty.

The U.S. investigation followed a U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands.
One official said some Bosnian Serbs fled the United States earlier this month after they were initially interviewed by immigration agents.

The largest number of arrests occurred Monday in Tampa, Florida, where eight suspects were apprehended. Several of them were arraigned in U.S. District Court there and pleaded not guilty.

As the person in DC who tipped me to this said in the email that accompanied it, this issue has been off the radar for too long.

War Criminal

It looks like Donald Rumsfeld will be passing up one of those top-dollar gigs with a defense contractor after he leaves the Secretary of Defense post in January. A job like that would require international travel, and Rumsfeld is mere days away from being indicted as a war criminal in a German court. If he leaves the United States, he could be arrested and prosecuted for his role in grevious human rights abuses that have occured on his watch and at times under his supervision.

Alberto Gonzalez and George Tenet also are facing these same charges, along with Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone; former assistant attorney general Jay Bybee; former deputy assisant attorney general John Yoo; General Counsel for the Department of Defense William James Haynes II; and David S. Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.

The case revolves around charges made by eleven Iraqi plaintiffs who were confined at Abu Ghraib prison and a high-level Saudi detainee who admitted to being an operative of al Qae'da after being tortured at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba.

The case is also bolstered by the testimony of Brig. General Janis Karpinski, the U.S. Army officer who was in charge of all prison operations in Iraq at the time the Abu Ghraib scandal broke.

The charges are being filed in Germany because German law provides for "universal jurisdiction" which allows for the prosecution of war crimes and related offenses that take place anywhere in the world.

In 2004 the German prosecutors nearly brought a narrower set of charges against Rumsfeld and other administration officials, but backed off when the United States offered assurances that the "situation was being dealt with."

With the passage of the Military Commissions Act on September 29 of this year, those officials are shielded from prosecution in the United States, no matter how grevious and clear-cut their wrongdoing.