Serbia seeks extradition of suspected Nazi from U.S.

BELGRADE (Reuters) - A Serbian court Friday issued an international arrest warrant for a naturalized U.S. citizen suspected of committing genocide as a Nazi officer in Belgrade during World War Two.

"Peter Egner, 88, is wanted on charges of killing 17,000 civilians, mainly Jews, Roma and political opponents between 1941 and 1943, during the German occupation," Zorica Ristic, spokeswoman for the Belgrade higher court, told Reuters.

Egner, an ethnic German born in Yugoslavia, entered the United States in 1960 and became a citizen in 1966.

The U.S. Justice Department has asked a federal court to revoke his U.S. citizenship based on evidence of his role in a Nazi mobile killing unit that participated in the mass murder of more than 17,000 Serbian civilians.

Belgrade was occupied by German forces from April 1941 until October 1944. More than half a million Serb civilians were killed during World War Two.

(Reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic; Writing by Maja Zuvela)