Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree granting Russian citizenship to Ratko Samac, former Bosnian Serb soldier accused of war crimes in the 1990s, whose extradition was requested by Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Samac is the 29th on the list of 44 foreign citizens to whom Putin granted Russian citizenship in a decree published on January 9, 2024, Radio Free Europe reported.

In 2016, Russia rejected the request of Bosnian Ministry of Justice to extradite Ratko Samac, who was accused of triple murder of civilians in Banja Luka in 1993 and war crimes against the civilian population in Kljuc, a northwestern Bosnian town.

He has been living in Russia since 1999, according to Russian media reports that RFE could not independently confirm.

Samac went for a medical treatment in Kurgan in the southern Urals in 1999, where he was arrested in 2016, as Sputnik reported at the time, based on BiH's request for a warrant for war crimes.

The state ombudsman for human rights at the time, Ella Pamfilova, asked the prosecutors to conduct an investigation into the extradition request. After that, no more was written about Samac.

In 2016, Sputnik also announced that after leaving for Russia, Samac first received a permit for a temporary stay in Russia and that in September 2015, his stay was extended until 2020. This information could also not be independently confirmed.

Samac is accused of serious violations of human rights due to the crimes committed against civilians in the area of Kljuc in the northwestern Bosnia during the war of the 1990s.

“We have information that Ratko Samac is currently in Russia,” Jelena Miljevic, secretary general of the Cantonal Court in Bihac, told the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) in 2016, adding that a red Interpol warrant had been issued for this person.

At the end of March 2016, the Ministry of Justice of BiH asked Russia to extradite Samac to face charges of war crimes following the request of the court in Bihac, the Ministry's spokeswoman at the time, Marina Bakic, told BIRN.

In addition to being accused of war crimes, the BiH Ministry of Justice said in 2016 that Samac was also accused of murdering civilians Hamdija Vuckic, his wife Dervisa Vuckic, and Mina Talic in 1993.

During the expulsion of the non-Serb population from Kljuc in 1992, over 150 Bosniak civilians were killed, and some were illegally arrested and beaten, according to the data of judicial institutions in BiH.