Posted on 03/27/2007 9:18:51 AM PDT by joan
Released : Friday, March 23, 2007 4:15 PM
SIOUX FALLS, South Dakota-A Bosnian man was indicted on state charges of aggravated assault as he fights extradition for a 1995 slaying in his homeland.
Samir Avdic, who was found guilty in absentia in his home country of shooting and killing a man while they hid in a cave to escape the violence in Bosnia, has been fighting a federal complaint accusing him of being a fugitive from a foreign country.
Avdic, 40, is in the United States on a temporary visa and has been living in Sioux Falls with his family and working at the John Morrell & Co. meatpacking plant. He was arrested March 9 by Sioux Falls police after he was accused of using his vehicle to ram into another vehicle carrying his stepdaughter's boyfriend.
A grand jury on Thursday indicted him on two counts of aggravated assault, three counts of simple assault and reckless driving. He has not yet appeared in court on those charges.
During a hearing on the federal charge, a judge on Thursday had ordered him held in jail until a June 5 hearing on the case.
In August 1995, Avdic and two other men were hiding in a cave while the nearby town of Srebrenica was under siege by Serbian forces, according to the federal complaint. The three men argued and Avdci fatally shot one of them in the back and, with the third man's help, threw the body down a ravine, according to the complaint.
A Bosnian court issued a warrant for Avdic's arrest in November 1998 and he was convicted a month later.
Avdic was initially sentenced to 12 years in prison but an appeals court later reduced it to six years after re-evaluating mitigating factors, the complaint states.
Research of his name also shows that he, or someone with his name and born in the same year (1967), was wanted for kiling 35 Serbs in Milici in 1993.
Samir Avdic was one of 8 Srebrenica men caught in the RS in the spring of 1996. The man up to be deported for Bosnia was convicted in the Bosnian Serb courts of killing another Bosniak militant he was with. He and another of his group had an arguement over salt, then they killed him and threw his body down a ravine. This was in August 1995, one month after the "fall" of Srebrenica.
Now he's shown his violent behavior in South Dakota.
...Sioux Falls police learned that Avdic is wanted as a fugitive from a foreign country after he was arrested on reckless driving and assault charges in March.
According to the federal complaint, a court in Avdic's homeland found him guilty in absentia in December 1998 of shooting and killing Mustafic Munib.
The complaint said Avdic, Munib and Hasic Nedzad were hiding out in caves in summer 1995 while the nearby town of Srebrenica was under siege from Serbian forces.
Avdic and Nedzad thought Munib was hiding salt from them, so they decided to kill him, the complaint said.
"It's a very unusual story because basically what happened was, the Serbian side was taking over the city of Srebrenica by force, and all the Muslims were hiding," said Jesenko Fazlagic of the Bosnian American Society outside Atlanta.
More than 7,000 people were killed in the Srebrenica massacre, which has been described in news reports as the worst war crime committed in Europe since the end of World War II.
Fazlagic said there are about 10,000 to 15,000 Bosnians in the Atlanta area, many of whom immigrated there during the violence of the 1990s. Others settled in major cities such as New York, Chicago and St. Louis, he said.
Sioux Falls' Bosnian population has grown steadily since the late 1990s.
Avdic's troubles in Sioux Falls began March 9 after police received a 911 call around 8 p.m. regarding an incident on East 12th Street.
A man told police that he got into an argument and was punched several times by Avdic. Avdic also is accused of following the man in his car and striking his vehicle, according to Sioux Falls police.
Avdic now faces a far more serious situation - the possibility of being extradited to Europe for the murder conviction.
The U.S. has an extradition treaty with Bosnia-Herzegovina, meaning the U.S. agrees to turn over criminals to them in many cases.
Jeff Martin can be reached at 605-331-2373.
I hate when reporters are lazy and do not know history. Millions of Germans were killed by the Soviets up to 1950. Hundreds of thousands of Baltic citizens were killed bu the Soviets through the 1950s. Millions of Russians and Ukrainians were killed by the soviets up to the 1980. And I could go on...
I need education, please.
Is it legal for a person in the USA on a "temporary visa" to work in any job?
What do they give the employer for a Social Security number?
TIA...
Beats me. A good question, but you'll need to find and ping someone who posts on the subjects of social security or immigrant worker threads and knows what they are talking about in regards to that.
Kick him out before we have another Salt Lake City massacre on our hands.
Yes.
We have many "temporary work" visa's. H1B's, H2A's, L Visas, E visas and others.
Another one of Hoplite's "8,000"?
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