PROSECUTORS ASK FOR ALUKIĆ’S RELEASE AND EXTRADITION HEARING CANCELLED

MOBILE, SEPTEMBER 11 /SRNA/ – US prosecutors have asked a US judge to cancel today's hearing on the extradition of war criminal Hamdija Alukić to BiH and to release him, Fox 10 News reports.

Alukić /70/, who is being held in US custody, is awaiting a decision on his extradition to BiH, where he would face charges for war crimes committed in the Prijedor area during the war in BiH. The hearing was originally scheduled for November 9, but prosecutors requested its cancellation. The prosecution cited a letter from the US State Department stating that, since Alukić's arrest, the State Department had received additional documentation concerning the case and that the new information requires further review to determine "whether it is appropriate to proceed with the extradition process in this case". Alukić moved to the United States several years after the war in BiH and reportedly lived a quiet life in Mobile County, Alabama. He was arrested in Alabama in March. Hamdija Alukić was reportedly part of a group of around 15 suspects who managed to evade arrest after the liberation of Kozarac and the surrounding area on May 25 and 26, 1992, and is suspected of planning and carrying out two attacks in which two people were killed. On August 29, 1992, the group, which also included Samir Alukić, Muhamed Kusuran, Suljo Kusuran, Fikret Hirkić and others, opened fire on the car of civilian Ostoja Baltić, killing him and then setting his body and vehicle on fire. That same day, in the hamlet of Podgrađe near Kozarac, they killed Božo Inđić and set fire to the house of Stojanka Vekić, who managed to escape with her daughter. Some group members were eliminated in one of the subsequent cases, others were arrested, while a third group managed to cross into Croatian territory at the end of 1992 and the beginning of 1993. There is information that one member of the group spent the entire war hiding in the Kozara area and did not leave the Prijedor area until February 1996. The judge has not yet ruled on prosecutors' request.