Aegis Trust

In 2008, many Sierra Leonean villagers journeyed to The Netherlands to tell their stories in the trial of Charles Taylor. One of them, Sia Komba, spoke of how she watched as rebel forces killed her family and then compelled her to carry a bag containing the heads of her children. Another, Patrick Sherriff, witnessed the terror inflicted on his brother whose 10 fingers were cut off with a knife before he was murdered.

Apart from an attempt to use video games as way of educating people about Darfur, the games industry isn't noted for its contribution to educating people away from violence.  Indeed our friends at TRIAL spent many (no doubt enjoyable) hours breaking many of the Geneva Conventions in games such as Call of Duty.

No doubt, there's a concern about life imitating art.  For instance, P.W. Singer in Wired for War:  The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century worries about the distancing effect of the video game tools (joysticks, modified XBox controllers, and video screens) on drone pilots based in Nevada firing real-life missiles in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

However, for the forseeable future the traffic will mostly be in the other direction:  art imitating life.  My nephew and I can't be the only ones who have noticed the similarities between the protagonist of Grand Theft Auto - Niko Bellic - and some of the alleged former Balkan war criminals who have washed up in the US such as Marko Boskic.  Both couple a past they don't want to talk about with an alleged propensity towards assault and driving offences:

 A Peabody construction worker accused of being one of the executioners who slaughtered some 1,200 Bosnian Muslim men in 1995 was charged yesterday with entering the United States illegally by claiming refugee status and not revealing his role in a notorious Bosnian Serb Army unit that took part in the worst massacre of civilians in Europe since the end of World War II.

Despite being a suspected war criminal, Marko Boskic, 40, was able to enter the United States four years ago under his own name and moved to Peabody, where he hardly kept a low-profile. Boskic had repeated run-ins with the law that led to numerous arrests on charges of drunken driving and serious assaults.

In April, he was arrested by Peabody police and charged with drunken driving and possession of an open container of alcohol after he crashed his Dodge Intrepid into a pole at 2:41 a.m. Most recently, on Aug. 11, Peabody police cited him for leaving the scene of an accident.

US Attorney Michael J. Sullivan said federal authorities launched an investigation of Boskic after receiving a tip. Sullivan said authorities methodically built a case against Boskic, leading to his arrest Wednesday night at his Peabody condominium. During an initial appearance at US District Court, Boskic was ordered held without bail.

In an affidavit dated Wednesday -- exactly one year to the day after Boskic was accused of participating in the massacre during testimony at the trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic at The Hague -- a federal immigration agent alleged that Boskic committed fraud when he failed to disclose that he was part of the 10th Sabotage, or Diversionary, Unit that was among the Bosnian Serb Army units that killed some 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys from the town of Srebenica in July 1995.

Specifically, Boskic is accused of carrying out the orders of others when he was one of eight men who gunned down 1,200 men at a farm in Pilica, a village near Srebenica.

 Source:  Boston Globe, 27 August 2004