Story highlights

ICE delivers Dejan Radojkovic to Bosnian and Herzegovina officials in Sarajevo Thursday

Radojkovic, 61, faces genocide charges stemming from July 1995

He moved to the United States in 1999

ICE arrested Radojkovic at his Las Vegas home in 2009

CNN  — 

A former Bosnian-Serb police commander wanted in his native country for genocide and atrocities against thousands of Bosnian Muslims was deported from the United States Wednesday, federal officials said Thursday.

Dejan Radojkovic, 61, was handed over to Bosnian and Herzegovina law enforcement officials in Sarajevo Thursday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who escorted him there on a commercial flight, an ICE statement said.

Radojkovic moved to the United States in 1999 and was living in Las Vegas, Nevada, when ICE agents arrested him on a war crimes warrant in 2009. An immigration judge ordered him deported 10 months later and his deportation appeal was eventually upheld.

He’s charged in the July 1995 Srebrenica genocide in which Bosnian Serb forces overran a contingent of United Nations peacekeepers, driving tens of thousands of Bosnian-Muslim civilians from the Srebrenica “safe area,” ICE said. More than 7,000 Bosnian-Muslim men and boys were executed it said.

Radojkovic allegedly used his position as a Special Police Brigade commander to aid in carrying out the crimes. Prosecutors charge that he led a platoon, rounded up about 200 Bosnian-Muslim men and took them to locations where they were killed.

“For the families who lost loved ones at Srebrenica, justice has been a long time coming, but they can take consolation in the fact that those responsible for this tragedy are now being held accountable for their crimes,” ICE Director John Morton said.

A second former special police commander linked to the massacre was arrested and deported in 2010, ICE said. Nedjo Ikonic, who lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was deported in 2010, on genocide-related charges in Bosnia and Herzegovina.