Feds Say Facial Recognition IDed a Bosnian War Criminal Living in Tennessee
Homeland Security agents used facial recognition to identify and arrest a man living in Tennessee they say stands committed war crimes during the Bosnian War nearly thirty years ago. The arrested man, who went by the name Sead Dukic for the past 24 years, was actually Sead Miljkovic, an alleged criminal long wanted by Bosnia and Herzegovina authorities, according to a DHS report revealed by Forbes this week.
The DHS documents reviewed by Forbes detail how agents were able to deploy facial recognition and fingerprinting software to match US records of “Dukic” to Bosnian records of a man with the last name Miljkovic. Law enforcement agents reportedly raided Miljkovic’s home and arrested him last week as he was preparing to leave on a vacation to Cancun, Mexico with his wife.
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Miljkovic, according to charges and a search warrant seen by Forbes, was formally placed on international law enforcement group Interpol’s “red notice” list for allegedly committing unspecific war crimes during the three-year conflict, which left more than 100,000 people dead. Interpol’s red notice is an alert sent out to law enforcement around the world calling for the arrest of a wanted person. Neither Miljkovic nor his alleged “Dukic” alias appeared on the public red notice list at the time of writing. Gizmodo could not independently verify the DHS documents viewed by Forbes. The DHS and Interpol did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s requests for comment. Gizmodo was unable to contact Miljkovic.
DHS agents and Customs and Border Patrol reportedly spent weeks surveilling Miljkovic before raiding his red brick Tennessee home, where he lived with his wife and daughter. The surveillance reportedly included setting up a pole camera on a nearby street to track the target while he was driving. Agents raiding Miljkovic’s house, according to documents seen by Forbes, allege they found “foreign military hardware” which included a Serbian flight. Bosnian Serbs have been accused of engaging in “ethnic cleansing” during the war.
Miljkovic had reportedly attempted to enter the US on two separate occasions in the 1990s. He was finally successful on his third effort in 1999 when he allegedly used the fabricated name Dukic. Now, Miljkovic is facing charges in the US for allegedly providing false information on his passport.
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