International War Criminal Arrested in Akron

AKRON, OH - Police have arrested and charged a believed war criminal from Bosnia. Ilija Josipovic, 59, is accused of falsifying his immigration documents and hiding his past as a member of the Zvornik Infantry Brigade.

Josipovic is believe to have served in the 6th Battalion, Zvornik Infantry Brigade, Army of the Republic of Srpska. The indictment says he served from May 25, 1992 to about 1996. According to a lawsuit in the Hague courts against three Army of the Srprska leaders, military forces carried out a directive to drive people (mostly Muslims) from the nations using murder, forced deportation, and other inhumane acts. Those acts took place from 1992 to 1996, and many of the military's leaders have been prosecuted in international courts. They wanted to create an ethnically "pure" region.

According to the United Nations, "It is estimated that more than 100,000 people were killed and two million people, more than half the population, were forced to flee their homes as a result of the war that raged from April 1992 through to November 1995..."

The UN says the worst atrocity of the conflict came under the leadership of Ratko Mladić, the leader of the Army of the Republic of Srpska. In the summer of 1995, "during a few days in early July, more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were executed by Serb forces in an act of genocide. The rest of the town’s women and children were driven out."

Josipovic had fake documents that allowed him to live in Ohio. In Feb. 2012, he had a Permanent Resident Card, which was fake, and used it to obtain an Ohio driver's license from a BMV in Akron. In 2014, he is believed to have gotten another Permanent Resident Card, in his name, which he knew was fake.

Josipovic was arrested following an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security. He will be prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Jason M. Katz.

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