MARKO BOSKIC, WAR CRIMINAL

Let's call this case a variation on a theme: here is a well known accused war criminal, Marko Boskic, who entered the United States illegally by claiming refugee status and using his own name in 2000 with no problem. The man who has been residing in Peabody, Massachusetts, is believed to be a member of a notorious execution group within the Bosnian Serb Army which killed 1200 Bosnian Muslim men in 1995. According to testimony at the Slobodan Milosevic trial in 2003, Boskic was one of eight soldiers who lined up men in Pilaca and executed them as part of the genocidal scheme of ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. Furthermore, it's not like Boskic was keeping a low profile. He had numerous arrests for drunk driving and assaults, but no one in local police checked up on his background. Only a tip to federal authorities led to an investigation of what Boskic was really about. Because of a "loophole" in immigration policy, the feds normally track only Nazi-era human rights violators. Boskic's part in the war crimes was described in a front page article in the Boston Globe in 1996, in addition to how he had threatened the reporter, the late Elizabeth Neuffer. After she tracked him down in Bosnia that year and asked him whether he had been ordered to kill the captives, Boskic responded, "Would you like to get whacked?" Update: September 30, 2004, Boskic was indicted for immigration fraud because he portrayed himself an an innocent refugee when he was actually a vicious war criminal.