Bosnian War Crime Suspect Arrested in Alabama After Selling Eggs to Walmart

Hamdija Alukic kept chickens behind his house in Wilmer, Alabama, sold eggs to Walmart, and by all accounts lived quietly with his family for years. On Wednesday, U.S. Marshals arrested the 70-year-old in Mobile, and federal court documents revealed why authorities had been looking for him: alleged involvement in two attacks during the Bosnian War more than three decades ago.

Alukic is being held without bond in the Baldwin County Jail. Authorities are seeking his extradition to Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he is expected to face prosecution for war crimes against the civilian population. The criminal complaint filed against him runs 261 pages.

Federal court documents, drawn from witness interviews, allege Alukic was a member of a Bosnian Muslim paramilitary group during the civil war that lasted from 1992 to 1995. The specific attacks he is accused of participating in are alleged to have occurred in 1992, thousands of miles from the Alabama neighborhood where he eventually settled.

His former neighbors in Wilmer had little sense of that history. One described a family that kept dogs and chickens, sold eggs locally and to Walmart, and largely kept to themselves. "They had dogs, chickens and they would sell eggs to Walmart and stuff. They were always cool. I've been over there a few times growing up and stuff. They were real foreign. They didn't really talk the best English, the dad and the mom anyway," the neighbor told Fox10tv.

The arrest landed as a shock to people who had lived near the family. "That just completely blows my mind cause I never seen that coming, that's pretty wild," another neighbor told WALA.

The case raises a question that Walmart has not yet addressed publicly: how a supplier accused of international war crimes was selling product to one of the world's largest retailers, however informally. The original reporting on the arrest explicitly flagged the case as drawing attention to supply chain vetting in retail. Whether Alukic operated as a direct vendor, supplied through an aggregator, or sold through some informal arrangement remains unclear. Walmart has not issued a statement.

Alukic's arrest comes more than three decades after the alleged attacks in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a reminder that international war crimes investigations have long institutional memories even when suspects have built entirely new lives far from the original jurisdiction.