WASHINGTON — An Ohio man was sentenced Oct. 15 to three years in prison for possessing a green card he illegally obtained by concealing that he had been charged with a war crime in Croatia prior to immigrating to the United States.
According to court documents, Jugoslav Vidic falsely stated that his only past military service was in the Yugoslav Army from 1988 to 1989, when, in fact, he fought with the Serb Army of Krajina and its predecessors during the civil war in the former Yugoslavia from 1991 to 1995. As a result of these materially false statements, Vidic was approved for lawful permanent resident status and received a green card.
“Our communities here in Ohio and across the United States are not safe havens for war criminals to escape accountability in their home countries,” said Homeland Security Investigations Executive Associate Director Katrina W. Berger. “It is my hope that this sentencing provides some measure of solace to the victims’ families with the knowledge that despite the passage of time, the United States will seek justice.”
Vidic admitted in his plea agreement before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio that he was charged with a war crime in Croatia in 1994 and convicted in absentia in 1998. The Croatian court found that during an attack by ethnic Serb forces in Petrinja, Croatia, on Sept. 16, 1991, Vidic cut off the arm of civilian Stjepan Komes, who died afterward. Vidic further admitted he knew about the Croatian charges when he immigrated to the United States in 1999, applied to become a lawful permanent resident in 2000, was interviewed by U.S. immigration officials, and received his green card in 2005.
Vidic pleaded guilty to one count of possessing an alien registration receipt card while knowing it had been procured through materially false statements. As part of the plea agreement, Vidic agreed to the entry of a judicial order of removal from the United States.
Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the FBI investigated the case with support from HSI’s Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Center (HRVWCC). HSI thanks the United Nations’ International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals for its assistance in the case.
Established in 2008, the HRVWCC furthers HSI’s efforts to identify, locate and prosecute human rights abusers in the United States, including those who are known or suspected to have participated in persecution, war crimes, genocide, torture, extrajudicial killings, female genital mutilation and the use or recruitment of child soldiers. The HRVWCC leverages the expertise of a select group of agents, lawyers, intelligence and research specialists, historians and analysts who direct the agency’s broader enforcement efforts against these offenders.
Since 2003, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested more than 520 individuals for human rights-related violations of the law under various criminal and immigration statutes. During the same period, ICE obtained deportation orders against and physically removed 1,152 known or suspected human rights violators from the United States. Additionally, ICE has facilitated the departures of an additional 199 such individuals from the United States.
Currently, HSI has more than 180 active investigations into suspected human rights violators and is pursuing more than 1,945 leads and removal cases involving suspected human rights violators from 95 different countries. Since 2003, the HRVWCC has issued more than 79,000 lookouts for potential perpetrators of human rights abuses and stopped over 390 human rights violators and war crimes suspects from entering the United States.