KRT Wire | 11/21/2005 | Investigator's thirst for justice confronts arid past

Omar Perez Botti paused, looking for acknowledgement. The police investigator had been vindicated, even congratulated. Yet doubt haunted the retelling of how he had arrested a Kosovo war crimes suspect in his western Argentine city. "Do you follow?" Perez Botti kept asking. "Do you get me?" Maybe the past was not so distant. Maybe the Argentina that harbored Nazi fugitives had not changed so much as Perez Botti thought. When the case landed on Perez Botti's desk in March, nobody wanted any part of it. A woman carrying a grudge had gone to her local Mendoza precinct house a few weeks before. Check out the man who jilted me, she told police. His real name is Nebojsa Minic, a Serbian paramilitary from Kosovo. He is accused of brutal war crimes. And he is here in Mendoza, in Perez Botti's town, living under a false identity.