The former supervisor of an infamous Bosnian prison camp during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s was arrested in the Boston area this week on charges of fraudulently obtaining U.S. citizenship by making false claims of persecution.

Kemal Mrndzic, now a resident of the Boston suburb of Swampscott, is accused by US prosecutors of having posed as a victim after the war, despite his alleged involvement in numerous atrocities carried out at the Celebici prison camp under his guidance. According to a statement by US prosecutors:

The United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found that guards at the Celebici prison camp had committed numerous murders, rapes, and had engaged in torture and other forms of persecution of Serb prisoners held at the camp. … numerous survivors have since identified Mrndzic as being involved in the beatings and other abuses committed there.

Court documents assert that Mrndzic, after being interviewed by ICTY investigators post-war, allegedly devised a plan to escape to the U.S. by fabricating a story of personal persecution. He was admitted as a refugee in 1999 and became a U.S. citizen in 2009.

One of the ICTY’s earliest indictments concerned the suffering of Serb victims at the Čelebići detention camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1990s sectarian war. Four accused, including the camp’s commander Zdravko Mucić, his deputy Hazim Delić, a guard Esad Landžo, and Bosnian army commander Zejnil Delalić, were tried for crimes primarily against Serb victims. The Tribunal established that Serb victims were beaten, tortured, raped, and killed at the camp.