Everett man accused of being a Bosnian war criminal

A naturalized U.S. citizen living in Everett was arrested Wednesday by U.S. marshals for extradition to Bosnia and Herzegovina for his alleged participation in the massacre of Croatian civilians while a member of a Bosnian Army unit during the Balkan War in 1993.

Edin Dzeko, 39, is accused in extradition documents of being a senior member of a unit that attacked the village of Trusina in April of that year, killing 16 civilians and at least four soldiers who had been disarmed, according to news reports at the time and a release from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Dzeko made his first appearance in U.S. District Court in Seattle on Wednesday afternoon. Magistrate Judge James Donohue scheduled a status conference on the case for April 27.

David Gehrke, Dzeko's attorney, insisted after the hearing that the U.S. Marshals Service arrested the wrong man and said Dzeko wasn't responsible for the alleged war crimes.

Members of Dzeko's family huddled outside the courtroom speaking with Gehrke. Some were visibly upset.

A woman who identified herself as Amra Dzeko answered a call placed to a phone linked to Edin Dzeko on Wednesday morning, but she declined to comment and hung up. Databases show the woman lives at the same Everett address as Dzeko, but it wasn't immediately clear if she is his wife.

On Wednesday afternoon, authorities in Oregon arrested a Beaverton woman — 39-year-old Rasema Handanovic — who was reportedly in the same unit as Dzeko and also committed atrocities, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Portland.

Officials from Bosnia and Herzegovina have already charged four others in connection with the attack, according to news reports.

For much of the war in the Balkans, Bosnia's Croats and Muslims were allied against Serbian forces. However, they turned on one another in 1993 and 1994 in the southern part of the country, where Trusina is located.

According to the extradition request submitted by Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dzeko was a member of the Zulfikar Special Purposes Detachment of the Supreme Command Staff of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Dzeko was allegedly a member of an execution squad that killed a number of civilians and Croatian Defense Council soldiers who had been captured and disarmed by Bosnian forces.

The extradition request — which totals 400 pages — says that Dzeko and the members of his unit targeted Croatian civilians and soldiers of the Croatian Defense Council. During the attack on Trusina, according to the documents, Dzeko forced an injured man out of a house at gunpoint, where the man was shot and killed by another member of his unit.

The request contains dozens of official Bosnian military and prosecution documents, including numerous statements from witnesses, survivors and other soldiers in the unit.

Dzeko allegedly threw another man into the yard of a house, shot and killed him and then turned his rifle on the man's grieving wife, killing her as well, according to the documents.

An unidentified soldier who participated in the attacks reported seeing a fellow soldier blasting away at the closed front door of a home belong to Croats with an AK-47 as screams could be heard coming from inside. The witness reported that a young woman in the house was wounded in the elbow and that a child had her thumb shot off, according to the documents.

The soldier also said he witnessed the execution of unarmed Croatian soldiers and that a commander had told them that "in the attack on Trusina, not a single hen should remain alive," according to the soldier's statement, which had been translated into English.

The documents indicate that Bosnian officials believe Dzeko and Handanovic — the woman arrested in Oregon — fled to the U.S. after the war to avoid prosecution. Dzeko immigrated to the U.S. in 2001 and became a naturalized citizen in 2006.

According to property records, Dzeko and his wife own a condominium in Everett. Court records show that he was arrested for drunken driving in March 2010 and pleaded guilty to negligent driving two months later.

Mike Carter: 206-464-3706 or mcarter@seattletimes.com

Seattle Times news researcher Gene Balk contributed to this report.