A woman who served in the Croatian army faces extradition from a small Kentucky town to face charges that she forced prisoners to drink human blood and gasoline during the bloody aftermath of the breakup of Yugoslavia.

U.S. Marshals arrested 52-year-old Azra Basic (BOS-ICH) on Tuesday in Stanton, about 45 miles east of Lexington, where she lives and works at a nearby food processing plant. She has lived in Kentucky for several years, but it's not clear how she wound up in the rural city best known for its annual corn festival.

The Croatian-born Basic is wanted in Bosnia on charges of committing war crimes against ethnic Serb civilians in 1992, including acts of murder and torture, Assistant U.S. Attorney James Arehart wrote in a complaint requesting extradition.

Arehart says Bosnian authorities accuse Basic, a one-time member of the Croatian Army, of killing at least one person and torturing others at three camps from April to June 1992, during Europe's bloodiest conflict since World War II.

Witnesses said Basic forced one man to drink gasoline, another to drink human blood and carved crosses into the flesh of a third man.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert E. Wier ordered Basic held in federal custody without bond pending an April 1 status hearing. Prosecutors argued that no bail amount would guarantee Basic's presence in court.

Basic's attorney, Patrick Nash of Lexington, said Thursday that he plans to request bail before the next court hearing.

"I'm still getting my arms around this case," said Nash, who was appointed by the court to the case.

Basic said at the court hearing that she had been working at the Nestle Prepared Foods plant in Mount Sterling, where frozen foods are processed. Nash declined to comment on whether Basic has any family in the state and why she was in Kentucky. A message left for the media relations office at Nestle was not immediately returned Thursday.

Court records list her as having lived at two addresses in Stanton.

Basic also worked at the Stanton Nursing Home, said neighbor Eli Vires, whose mother-in-law stayed there. Basic displayed compassion toward her patients, Vires said, quoting her as saying: "The only thing that can't be replaced was human life."

U.S. Marshal Loren "Squirrel" Carl said considering the "shocking nature" of the accusations, officers were relieved to have captured Basic.

"This brings her long run from justice to an end," Carl said.

Bosnian authorities in Doboj charged Basic in January 1993 as an unknown defendant, using witness statements, medical examinations and forensic experts between 1992 and 2001 to identify her. Interpol traced Basic to Kentucky in 2004 and an international arrest warrant went out in 2006.

Arehart's complaint accuses Basic of committing crimes at three camps near the majority-Serbian settlement of Cardak in Derventa. Witness said the Croatian military took ethnic Serbs from the Cardak settlement in late April of 1992 and tortured them.

Radojic Garic, listed in the complaint as a witness, said Blagoje Djuras was beaten unconscious. Garic said Basic then stabbed him in the neck, killing him, and dragged other Serbs to the body "and made us drink that blood."

A second witness, Dragan Kovacevic, told investigators in October 1994 that Basic slit the throat of Djuras. Arehart said Kovacevic identified a picture of Basic in December 2009.

Another man, Sreten Jovanovic, told investigators in September 1992 that he was forced to drink gasoline, beaten unconscious and his hands and face were set on fire by Basic, who was wearing a military police uniform from a brigade in Rijeka, a port city in Croatia.

Arehart wrote that a subsequent medical examination concluded that Jovanovic suffered "torture in captivity."

Other witnesses listed in the complaint said Basic and other soldiers beat and burned them and pulled their nails out with pliers.

In August 1992, witness Cedo Maric told Bosnian investigators that Basic cut a cross and four "S" letters into his forehead before hacking his neck below the Adam's apple.

In November 1994 testimony, Mile Kuzmanovic told investigators Basic forced him to "swallow a handful of salt and eat Yugoslav money" before beating him with boots, weapon butts, metal bars and batons. Kuzmanovic said Basic and others forced him to "lick blood off floors covered in broken glass and crawl on the glass with a knotted rope in his mouth with which soldiers used to pull out the teeth of prisoners."

Federal prosecutors say each offense violates the United National Convention Against Torture, which prohibits inhumane and degrading treatment of people.

Boris Mrkela, an interpreter for the Center for Investigative Reporting in Sarajevo, said the Balkans have a history of violence, particularly in combat.

"War crimes are brutal everywhere and in the Balkans we have a long tradition of brutality," Mrkela said.

Throughout Yugoslavia, prosecutors are looking for hundreds of fugitives, though nearly all are men. One of the few women arrested in connection with atrocities was Biljana Plavsic, a high ranking Bosnian Serb official who served years in a Swedish jail after her U.N. court verdict.

The United Nations war crimes tribunal, based in The Hague, Netherlands, is still searching for two high-profile fugitives, Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadzic, considered by the court to be masterminds of killings during the conflict.

Over 100,000 people were killed, most of them Muslim Bosnians. The war was fought between the country's three ethnic groups - the Muslim Bosnians, the Catholic Croats and the Christian Orthodox Serbs.