Convicted War Criminal Stripped of U.S. Naturalized Citizenship

In a press release issued yesterday, the Department of Justice announced that an Oregon federal district court last week revoked the naturalized U.S. citizenship of  Sammy Rasema Yetisen who had previously pleaded guilty in a Bosnian court to war crimes.  She returned to the United States after serving her five and a half year prison sentence in Bosnia.  According to DOJ:

Yetisen, 46, was part of an elite unit of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina that attacked the village of Trusina in April 1993, in what is known as the Trusina massacre. The unit targeted Bosnian Croats who resided in the village because of their Christian religion and Croat ethnicity, killing 22 unarmed individuals including women and the elderly. Yetisen played a key role in the massacre, serving as part of a firing squad that lined up and executed six unarmed prisoners of war and civilians. Yetisen was admitted to the United States as a refugee before naturalizing in 2002. In her naturalization application, Yetisen indicated that she had never had any military service “in the United States or in any other place.”