Nicholas Ribic

Who is Nicholas Ribic?

Nicholas Nikola Ribic, is a former resident of Edmonton, Alberta, was arrested on February 20, 1999 in Mainz, Germany and then charged as a terrorist as part of the Bosnian-Serb army that captured United Nations peacekeepers and used them as human shields against NATO air strikes in 1995. Ribic, of Serbian ancestry, left his home in Canada to travel to Bosnia and Herzegovina where he joined the Bosnian-Serb army at the height of the war.

Ribic was charged under a section of Canada's Criminal Code on jurisdiction that had never been used before that allows Canada to claim jurisdiction over kidnapping and hostage-taking offences of or by a Canadian committed outside the country. This law was enacted specifically to deal with terrorists.

Ribic's hostage was a fellow Canadian, Capt. Patrick Rechner, working in Bosnia as an unarmed U.N. military observer. The May 1995 worldwide television and newspapers coverage showed the shocking photo of a distraught Capt. Rechner chained to a lightning rod at an ammunition bunker in the Bosnian city of Pale. Ribic was in the uniform of a Bosnian Serb soldier, wielding an AK47 rifle, in the company of other Serb soldiers. Held for 24 days, the photo of Capt. Rechner became a symbol of the United Nations' incapacity to deal with Serb military aggression.