"Term over, Vt. sex offender will head for Calif." by DAVE GRAM | Associated Press, July 27, 2013
MONTPELIER — A sex offender deemed at high risk to commit new crimes was released from a Vermont prison on Friday, and Governor Peter Shumlin said the man was heading to California....
The case highlights a dilemma in releasing sex offenders still deemed dangerous even after having served time: Correction officials and police frequently want to notify the public, but that notification can create problems in getting the person reintegrated in society....
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That's Szad, folks.
"Vermont man accused of Bosnian war crimes" by Dave Gram | Associated Press, July 27, 2013
BURLINGTON, Vt. — A Bosnian immigrant in Vermont’s largest city pleaded not guilty Friday to lying to immigration authorities by denying involvement in war crimes in the conflict in Bosnia two decades ago.
Prosecutors allege Edin Sakoc, 54, was involved in war crimes against a civilian Bosnian Serb family in 1992. An indictment said he raped a Serb woman and aided in the killing of the two elderly people she was caring for and in burning of the house where they lived.
He appeared briefly Friday in US District Court in Burlington, where he was ordered to surrender his passport because he was deemed a flight risk.
Judge Christina Reiss asked Sakoc whether he had reviewed the case with his attorney. Through the interpreter, he said yes, but that ‘‘we did not talk about everything.’’
Authorities said Sakoc lied when he applied for refugee status and later for permanent residency and then citizenship in the United States by denying any past crimes of persecution.
Sakoc is a Bosnian Muslim and his alleged victims were Orthodox Christian Bosnian Serbs.
The Bosnian Serb family had moved from a home in the southern Bosnian municipality of Capljina to the home of a Bosnian Croat family nearby, the indictment said.
Most Bosnian Serbs in the village had fled to safer areas, but a woman remained to care for two people who were too old to travel far.
On or about July 9, 1992, Sakoc and an unnamed co-conspirator went to the home where the victims were staying, took the woman from the home, raped her, and took her to the Dretelj prison camp, the indictment said.
Later that night or early the next day, Sakoc and the co-conspirator returned to the home, the indictment said. With help from Sakoc, the co-conspirator fatally shot the two elderly people, burned the home down, and separately burned the victims’ bodies.
The two-count indictment did not include charges directly tied to those alleged war crimes, but charged that Sakoc had lied three times to immigration authorities when asked if he had participated in crimes of persecution and moral turpitude: once when he applied for refugee status in the United States in 2001, again when he applied for permanent legal residency in 2004, and again when he applied for citizenship in 2007.
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