Muhamed Sacirbey
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Muhamed Sacirbey (born Muhamed Šaćirbegović on July 20, 1956) is a Bosnian-American lawyer and businessman who served at the pleasure of the Bosnian government during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and shortly after.
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[edit] Early life
Muhamed Sacirbey was born in Sarajevo, SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, Yugoslavia. He is the son of Nedžib Šaćirbegović (born 1926), a friend of Alija Izetbegović; incarcerated with him after running afoul of the communist government of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia following World War II. He has a younger brother Omar, who is a journalist in Boston[1]
In 1963, the family left Bosnia due to his father's anti-communist politics and lived for a while in Turkey before settling in the United States, in 1967, and became naturalized citizens in 1973. It was at this point that the family name was changed to Sacirbey.
Sacirbey attended Tulane University in New Orleans on a football scholarship and subsequently received a law degree from Tulane Law School and an MBA at Columbia Business School. Sacirbey served as legal counsel to Standard & Poor's 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 assassination of Irfan Ljubijankić in 1995. 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 delegation to the peace negotiations in Dayton, Ohio. The settlement came to be known as the Dayton Accords.
[edit] Mabel Wisse Smit
Around 1993 he had an affair with Mabel Wisse Smit, who is currently the wife of Prince Friso of Orange-Nassau, second son of Queen Beatrix and the late Prince Claus of the Netherlands.
[edit] Legal Troubles
After the war Sacirbey, continued to serve as UN ambassador until late 2000. After his departure, rumors of financial irregularities in Bosnia's UN mission began to circulate. Eventually in 2001, the Bosnian government began to investigate Sacirbey on the suspicion that he embezzled $610,982 and misappropriated $1.8 million of state funds during his tenure as ambassador.
On December 5, 2001 the Sarajevo Cantonal prosecutor's office issued and arrest warrant for Sacirbey, and a formal request for extradition was made on January 29, 2002. Sacirbey was arrested on March 25, 2003 at his home in Staten Island and held for extradition.
He was held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center until he was released July 27, 2004 on $6 million bail. Sacirbey also had to submit to electronic monitoring.
On January 19, 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 on March 21, 2005 before a federal district judge.
On September 7, 2006, the district judge denied his petition for habeas corpus relief and ruled that he is extraditable. Sacirbey has appealed the decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 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.
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. He also stated that he spent up to $800,000 of his own money to cover Bosnia's diplomatic expenses. Sacirbey has also questioned the legitimacy of the 1902 extradition treaty under which he is being extradited. The treaty is between the US and Serbia of which Bosnia was not a part of then or now.
