Nov 14, 7:00 PM EST

Refugee deported from Arizona guilty of war crimes

PHOENIX (AP) -- A Bosnian Serb who came to Arizona as a refugee and later was deported on an immigration violation has been convicted of war crimes and sentenced to seven years in prison.

An international war crimes court convicted Mladen Blagojevic on Nov. 6 of crimes against humanity related to the Bosnian Serb attack on the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica in 1995, said Jason Kidd, assistant special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs in Arizona.

Srebrenica was the site of a massacre in July 1995 - months before the end of the Bosnian war and after the Serb troops took control over the town in the east of the Balkan republic. The soldiers separated men and boys from the women and slaughtered 8,000 Muslim men and boys within days.

Blagojevic, a Bosnian Serb military policeman when the Bosnian Serb Army and police forces overran Srebrenica, was among two dozen Bosnian Serbs who came to Arizona as refugees and were later charged with immigration-related violations in 2004 and 2005.

Immigration officials said the men had lied to American authorities about their service in the Serbian Army.

One of the men, Zdravko Bozic, was tried alongside Blagojevic and was acquitted of a charge of crimes against humanity, Kidd said.

Twenty-two of the 24 are still awaiting deportation from the United States.

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