WASHINGTON — A man from Parma Heights was arraigned Thursday on criminal charges related to alleged false statements to immigration and law enforcement officials.
Officials said the statements were concerning his military service and involvement in a political and ethical attack on civilians in Croatia during the civil war in the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia.
According to the inditement, Jugoslav Vidic, 55, made allegedly false statements while applying to become a lawful permanent resident. Vidic said his only past military service was in the Yugoslav Army from 1988 to 1989 and did not disclose his service in the Serb Army of Krajina and its predecessors from 1991-1995.
Vidic allegedly said he had never been charged with breaking any laws, but he was convicted in absentia in 1998 of a war crime in Croatia. According to the indictment Vidic said he had never killed a person because of ethnic origin or political opinion. Allegedly he participated in an attack by Serb military forces in Sept. 1991 where Vidic singled out and took away at gunpoint a Croatian civilian.
The civilian had recently shaken hands with Franjo Tudjman, Croatia’s then-president, who supported Croatian independence from Yugoslavia. The civilian was never seen alive again and later his body was exhumed from a mass grave.
In 1999, Vidic immigrated to the U.S. as a refuge and his application to become a permanent resident was approved in 2005.
Vidic is also accused of lying to law enforcement officials in 2017 when they questioned his immigration application. He is charged with one count of possessing a green card which was received through materially false statements and one count of making false statements to a federal agent.
If convicted, Vidic faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison for the first charge and a maximum penalty of five years in prison for the second.
Information about human rights violators in the U.S. can contact law enforcement through the HSI tip line at 1-866-DHS-2-ICE (1-866-347-2423) or its online tip form at https://www.ice.gov/webform/ice-tip-form or the FBI tip line at 1-800-CALLFBI (1-800-225-5324) or its online tip form at https://tips.fbi.gov/.
