Dark Past in Balkan War Intrudes on New Life
By MALCOLM GAY
Published: April 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/us/04hide.html?ref=todayspaperSTANTON, Ky. — Nearly two decades after fleeing her native Croatia, the squat, hardworking woman known as Issabell Basic lived a quiet life in this small town, firing up her Jeep Cherokee each day for the 25-minute commute to her job making Hot Pockets.
She doted on the dog she had bottle-fed as a puppy, was handy at sinking a fence post, and though neighbors never took to her stuffed grape leaves and cabbage, friends loved the cakes she baked each time a birthday rolled around.
Emphysema kept her close to the series of homes she shared with Steve Loman and his wife, Lucy, whom she called “Sis.” The Lomans, in turn, describe Ms. Basic, 51, as a “big-hearted” person — the kind who would not buy something for herself without first picking up a gift for a friend, but who was also so scarred by the Bosnian conflict that she could not watch war movies and had severed all ties with her native land.
But perhaps there was another reason for the break: the woman known here as Issabell is identified in court papers as Azra Basic, and prosecutors in Bosnia allege that in 1992 she was part of a vicious brigade of Croatian Army soldiers that tortured and killed ethnic Serbs at three detention camps in the early years of the Bosnian war.
Victims and witnesses from the camps, quoted in court documents, say that while wearing a Croatian uniform, twin knives strapped to her belt and a boot, Ms. Basic carved crosses into prisoners’ foreheads. They accuse her of slitting one man’s throat and forcing others to drink from the dead man’s wound. One witness says Ms. Basic made him drink gasoline, then set fire to his hands and face. Others say she forced them to crawl — half-naked, a knotted rope in their mouths and a Croatian soldier on their back — across a floor littered with glass. Now, after nearly 20 years, the past 15 spent working odd jobs in New York and Kentucky, Ms. Basic faces extradition to Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she would stand trial in district court on charges of war crimes.
One witness says Ms. Basic made him drink gasoline, then set fire to his hands and face. Others say she forced them to crawl — half-naked, a knotted rope in their mouths and a Croatian soldier on their back — across a floor littered with glass.
Now, after nearly 20 years, the past 15 spent working odd jobs in New York and Kentucky, Ms. Basic faces extradition to Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she would stand trial in district court on charges of war crimes.
“They’ve alleged that she is the woman that did these atrocities; we’re certainly going to contest that,” said Patrick Nash, who is representing Ms. Basic (pronounced BOSS-ich) in the extradition proceedings. Ms. Basic, who is being held at the Fayette County Detention Center in Lexington, declined an interview request through her lawyer.
Though she was first charged in 1993, Ms. Basic was not located by Interpol until 2004. The Bosnian government registered a formal extradition request in 2007, but United States authorities asked for additional evidence before sending federal marshals to arrest her here last month.
By that time, according to the Lomans, speaking publicly for the first time, Ms. Basic had been living with them for five years, most recently sleeping on a twin mattress in the living room of their rambling, three-bedroom home. Over coffee before work, trips to the store and nights spent in front of the TV, Ms. Basic confided the details of her old life to her new American “family.”
“It wasn’t like it was a secret or anything, ” said Mr. Loman, a retired truck driver who was arrested at the house with Ms. Basic on an unrelated weapons charge.
“The first man she killed, it made her sick,” Ms. Loman said. “She came face to face with him. And she had to kill him or be killed. She said it made her sick at her stomach, and then she said, after that it all went down pretty easy — after you kill your first.”
The extradition complaint accuses Ms. Basic of causing only one death.
The daughter of a ship’s captain, Ms. Basic told the Lomans that she and her young son had fled their home when the fighting broke out. She said her son had died of a heart ailment and that she was captured by Serbian fighters, after which she took up arms with the Croatian Army, which promised to feed her and give her cigarettes.
Court records contained in the extradition request indicate that she married Nedzad Basic in 1994. She later recounted to Ms. Loman how the Red Cross had helped resettle the pair in the United States, after a bomb blast destroyed one of her kidneys and lodged shrapnel in her skull.
Once in this country, she began reinventing herself. Ms. Basic changed her name to Issabell, moved from Rochester to Lexington, Ky., and became an American citizen. Court records indicate that she divorced her husband in 2005. Ms. Loman, who first met Ms. Basic while both were working at a Lexington-area nursing home, said that she often worked two jobs — in part to help support the men she dated — and that by the time she moved in with them, she had little contact with her previous life.
“She’d tell everybody that my son was her nephew,” said Ms. Loman, 63, who once offered to contact Ms. Basic’s family.
“She said: ‘Absolutely not. You’re my family.’ ”
The United Nations estimates that 104,000 people died in the ethnic strife that gripped the Balkans in the early to mid-1990s after the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia. The conflict, marked by ethnic cleansing, was the most brutal to occur on European soil since World War II and prompted the establishment of a special war crimes tribunal.
But unlike many who have later been found guilty of war crimes, Ms. Basic did not hide her history entirely from her two closest friends.
The revelations did not deter the Lomans from inviting Ms. Basic to come with them when they moved to Stanton, a 45-minute drive southeast of Lexington. Over time she divulged more details, including how she had once witnessed the extended gang rape of a teenage girl by Serbian fighters. The girl, Ms. Basic told them, died the next day.
“One time they came up on these Serbs, and she recognized the man that had raped that young girl,” Ms. Loman said. A fellow soldier drew his rifle, but “she said: ‘No. Don’t shoot him. I want him,’ ” Ms. Loman said, adding that nightmares often caused her friend to moan loudly, awakening the rest of the house.
“She got him, and she cut his penis off, and she said, ‘Now, you so-and-so, you’ll never rape anyone again.’ ”
The episode is not mentioned in the extradition request, though some witnesses say that Ms. Basic threatened to “circumcise” them. Ms. Basic’s lawyer, Mr. Nash, declined to comment on the matter.
“Anything she done, it was army connected,” said Ms. Loman, who said she believed that her friend was a fundamentally good person whom the horrors of war had forced to make impossible moral choices. The war toughened Ms. Basic, Ms. Loman said, but she was loyal and felt deeply for her friends, naming Ms. Loman in her will and buying carpet for a bedroom addition that would have allowed Ms. Basic her own room.
“I have no doubt if someone wanted to shoot me, she’d take the bullet,” Ms. Loman said.
The Lomans are not alone in this hill-country town of 3,000 when they say that what international courts deem war crimes are in fact rough justice.
“I don’t think she’s guilty of anything but being a human being,” said Eli Vires, a neighbor. “They should just let her out of jail and be done with it.”
The belief that Ms. Basic is being “railroaded” is bolstered here by her reputation as friendly and hardworking. Mr. Vires’s mother-in-law, Henrietta Kirchner, 88, said Ms. Basic had been very kind when attending her at an area nursing home.
“I thought she was a very nice lady,” Ms. Kirchner said.
But Amy King, who cooks pizza for the regulars at the Marathon gas station, said she was glad Ms. Basic was in custody.
“I was always taught an eye for an eye, but this woman is whacked,” said Ms. King, who has never met Ms. Basic but who like so many others in town has followed the case closely.
If convicted, Ms. Basic would most likely spend the rest of her life in prison. But if she is found not guilty, Ms. Loman said she would welcome her home.
“She’s already been through hell once,” Ms. Loman said as she sifted through Issabell’s clothes and pictures. “Why put her through it again?”
