Muslim Rebels Return to Bosnia, U.N. Says
The United Nations claimed a small victory Friday, reporting that the first of 20,000 rebel Muslim refugees who fled the Bihac area in northwestern Bosnia-Herzegovina in August had begun to return home.
The refugees are followers of Fikret Abdic, a Muslim warlord who fought alongside rebel Bosnian Serbs against the Muslim-led Bosnian government.
“This is the first time during the whole conflict in the former Yugoslavia that the UNHCR has organized voluntary repatriation,” said Mans Nyberg, a spokesman in Zagreb for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
Nyberg said about 120 refugees left their squalid camp just north of the Bosnian border Friday without incident. About 65 people had gone earlier in the week.
Abdic, a food-industry magnate, rebelled against Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic in 1993 and set up an “autonomous province” headquartered in Velika Kladusa in the northwestern corner of Bosnia.
When Croatia recovered the Krajina district from rebel Croatian Serbs, Abdic’s position in neighboring Bosnia collapsed. His followers fled into Croatia, and he is under arrest in a luxury Zagreb hotel.
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