CLEVELAND — A Parma Heights man who lied about his alleged war crimes in Croatia has been sentenced to three years in federal prison for immigration fraud.
Jugoslav Vidic, 56, pleaded guilty last December to one count of possessing an alien registration receipt card knowing it had been procured through materially false statements. While applying for a green card roughly two decades ago, Vidic claimed he had never been charged with a crime when, in fact, he had been convicted for his alleged actions during the infamous Yugoslav Wars.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Vidic was a member of the Serbian Army of Krajina in the early 1990s, an ethnic nationalist group which carried out several massacres of civilians during the civil war in Eastern Europe. During one such attack in September of 1991, Vidic allegedly kidnapped a man named Stjepan Komes at gunpoint after seeing Komes shaking hands with then Croatian President Franjo Tuđman. Investigators claimed Vidic cut off Komes' arm and killed him, with Komes' body later being found in a mass grave.
A Croatian court charged Vidic with a war crime in 1994, and he was convicted in absentia in 1998. However, he evaded his would-be captors and arrived in the United States as a refugee in 1999, receiving status as a permanent resident in 2005.
Per 3News media partner Cleveland.com, Vidic worked as a sausage maker in Greater Cleveland for the better part of the last 25 years, being hit with accusations of sexually harassing employees as well as selling uninspected meat. When first asked by federal agents in 2017 about issues with his earlier green card application, he denied any wrongdoing, but he was ultimately arrested in January of 2023 for making "multiple false statements."
As part of his plea deal reached last December, Vidic admitted to knowing about his war crime conviction when he applied for permanent status, something that automatically would've made him ineligible for a green card. Still, during sentencing Tuesday at the Carl B. Stokes Federal Court House Building in Cleveland, he denied killing Stjepan Komes.
"I never had any intent to do harm," Cleveland.com reported an emotional Vidic telling the court through an interpreter. "I wanted to come here for the sake of my family."
More than 140,000 people were killed in the 10-year civil war than resulted in the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, including Croatia's independence. Following Vidic's sentencing, Interim U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio Rebecca Lutzko released the following statement:
"Vidic committed serious human rights violations and was convicted of war crimes in Croatia as a result. Yet, he lied to U.S. immigration officials about his conviction and participation in a violent military force to claim refugee status and obtain a green card — becoming a permanent legal resident of our country — when he was not eligible to do so. Those who run away from violent crimes they commit elsewhere in the world and then enter our country by brazenly lying about their past will be held to account, as yesterday's sentence demonstrates. Vidic;s deceitful actions are detestable, and unfairly hurt people in need who legitimately seek refuge to flee real harms in their home countries."
Once Vidic's American prison term is completed, Cleveland.com says he will be deported to Croatia, where he faces a 20-year sentence for war crimes.
