AN Oxford aid worker Bill Croker, who made 16 trips to Bosnia to help war victims in the early 1990s, has died.

Mr Croker, who in recent years had lived with his nephew in Littlemore, gave up being a magistrate and threw himself into his work as a volunteer for the Bosnian Aid Committee of Oxford.

He died last month aged 77 after suffering a lung-related illness and his funeral was held yesterday at Oxford Crematorium.

Mr Croker frequently risked his life to deliver aid in trucks to remote parts of Bosnia.

On his 13th mercy mission to Bosnia, he and three companions were captured by the Croatian Military Police and held in jail for four days.

They were only freed after a United Nations truck passed the barracks and UN staff negotiated their release.

After making 16 trips to war-torn Yugoslavia in eight months, Mr Croker fled the war zone in 1993 after colleagues warned him he was being hunted by Croatian military police.

Mr Croker had apparently been accused of being a “spy, smuggler and gun runner” for the Bosnian Muslims, but he denied the allegations and fought to clear his name before the civil war ended in the late 1990s.

Following a spell in the Army, the father-of-two divorced and moved to Oxford where he worked as an industrial engineer, living in Sandford-on-Thames and Grays Road, Headington.

In recent years he lived with his nephew in Bodley Road, Littlemore.

Mr Croker’s funeral was held at Oxford Crematorium.