A former Bosnian Serb militia leader, wanted by a UN tribunal on charges of crimes against humanity, has been captured here, Argentine police and Serbian officials said.
Milan Lukic, who was indicted in The Hague, Netherlands, in 2000 in connection with a string of notorious killings during the Bosnian war, was awaiting initial questioning after his arrest Monday, authorities said.
Earlier this year, a Serbian court sentenced Lukic in absentia to 20 years in prison for his role in the abduction of 16 Muslims from a bus in eastern Serbia in 1992.
Lukic, as a reputed member of a notorious paramilitary group -- the Avengers -- allegedly took part in the abduction of the Muslims, 15 men and a woman, who were later taken to Bosnia, tortured at a local hotel and executed. Their bodies were dumped in the Drina River.
An Argentine federal police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Lukic was awaiting questioning by a judge on an "international request."
Police did not provide details of the arrest, which was first disclosed by Serbian authorities after reports began circulating in Belgrade. Lukic had been on the run since the late 1990s.
According to the UN war crimes indictment, Lukic in 1992 organized a group of paramilitaries who between May 1992 and October 1994 "committed, planned, instigated and ordered the executions" of Bosnian Muslims in the territory of Visegrad and elsewhere in Bosnian Serb-controlled areas.
He is also charged in the indictment with cruel and inhumane acts against non-Serbs, persecution on political, racial and religious grounds, crimes against humanity as well as unlawful detention, humiliation, terrorizing and psychological abuse of Bosnian Muslims.
"We heard the news and we greatly appreciate the work of the Argentine police," said Florence Hartmann, spokeswoman for the chief UN war crimes prosecutor.
Lukic is the second former paramilitary detained in Argentina in months.
In June, Serbia requested the extradition of Nebojsa Minic, commander of the notorious former group known as "Lightning" that operated in the Serbian province of Kosovo during a 1998-99 war there.
Minic, who is suspected of killing 12 members of a Kosovo Albanian family in 1999, was arrested in May in the western Argentine city of Mendoza on charges of illegal entry and use of forged documents. Although he is sought for trial at home, Minic is not wanted by the UN war crimes court in The Hague.
Two other top Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitives, wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and military commander General Ratko Mladic, remain at large.
In June 1992, according to the indictment, Lukic and others led seven Bosnian Muslim men to the Drina River where Lukic shot them with automatic weapons, killing five.
Also in June, Lukic and other militiamen allegedly drove to a furniture factory in Visegrad, where seven Bosnian Muslim men were marched to a riverbank and shot and killed, the indictment says.
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