Muhamed Sacirbey
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Muhamed Sacirbey (b. Muhamed Šaćirbegović on July 20, 1956 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina) is a Bosnian-American lawyer and businessman who served at the pleasure of the Bosnian government during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War and shortly after.
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[edit] Early life
Sacirbey is the son of Nedžib Šaćirbegović (b. 1926), a friend of Alija Izetbegović, who was incarcarated with him after running afoul of the communist government of Yugoslavia following World War II. His brother Omar Sacirbey is a journalist in New York[1]
In 1963, the family left Bosnia due to his father's anti-communist politics and lived for a while in Turkey before setttling in the United States, in 1967, and became naturalized citizens in 1973. Here, the family name was changed to Sacirbey.
Sacirbey was a good student and attended Tulane University in New Orleans on a football scholarship and did graduate work at Columbia University. Sacirbey lived in New York and worked as an investment banker on Wall Street.
[edit] War Time
When the Bosnian War broke out, he offered his services to the Bosnian government and became Bosnia's first ambassador to the United Nations, in 1992, and, subsequently, foreign minister after the death of Irfan Ljubijankić. During the war, he made many impassioned and articulate pleas for the lifting of the arms embargo against the Bosnian government and made repeated calls for the UN to protect the so-called safe areas from indiscriminant attacks. He traveled the world in a bid for support and funds. In November 1995, he accompanied the Bosnian New York judge says former Bosnian ambassador can be extradited] delegation to the peace negotiations in Dayton, Ohio. The settlement came to be known as the Dayton Accords.
[edit] Post War Legal Troubles
After the war Sacirbey, continued to serve as UN ambassador until late 2000. After his departure, rumours of financial irregularities in Bosnia's UN mission began to circulate. Eventually in 2002, the Bosnian government made allegations that Sacirbey embezzled US$610,000 and misappropriated US$ 1.9 million of state funds during his tenure as ambassador.
In March 2003, he was arrested at his home in Staten Island and held for extradition. For his part, Sacirbey denied stealing any money and said that the entire affair was cooked up by political opponents in Bosnia, particularly Serbs and those who opposed his war time advocacy. Nevertheless, he was incarcerated at the federal detention center in Manhattan pending extradition.
In July 2004, he was released on US$6 million bail and had to submit to electronic monitoring.
In January 2005, he was certified by a federal magistrate in New York as extraditable; that certification empowers the US Attorney General to order his extradition. As is usual in extradition cases, he appealed his certification by filing a habeas corpus petition before a federal district judge (also in New York).
In September 2006, the district judge denied his petition for habeas corpus relief and ruled that he is extraditable. Sacirbey has not exhausted all of his appeals. He could take an appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and, if he should lose there, he could ask the US Supreme Court to hear his case. The Attorney General cannot extradite him while the appeals process is pending.
Sacirbey currently resides in New York City. In July 2006, he was released from house arrest, but must still remain in New York.
