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October 17, 2024 – 01:51
New York, Oct 16 (EFE).- The United States Justice announced this Wednesday a three-year prison sentence for a war criminal from the former Yugoslavia for lying to immigration authorities to enter the country as a refugee ago. two decades and subsequently obtain residence and work permits.
Jugoslav Vidic, 56, living in Ohio (USA), committed human rights violations and was convicted of war crimes in Croatia in 1998 after fighting in the Serbian military force in Krajina between 1991 and 1995, a period in which the one who fatally injured a civilian, according to a statement from the Department of Justice.
Vidic had reached a plea agreement in which he acknowledged having lied about his criminal history when he arrived as a refugee in the United States in 1999 and in the subsequent process to regularize his immigration status until he obtained a “green card” in 2005, for who will be deported to Croatia after serving his sentence.
The Northern District Attorney of Ohio, Rebecca Lutzko, noted that the convicted man did not meet the requirements to be a legal permanent resident, and assured that his deception “harms people in need who legitimately seek refuge to flee from real harm in their countries of origin.” ».
Local media Cheveland.com indicates that Vidic, who is an ethnic Serb, admitted knowing that he had been convicted ‘in absentia’ in Croatia, but denied having committed the murder of a civilian named Stjepan Komes, an ethnic Croat, whom he allegedly cut a arm and let himself bleed to death in 1991, according to the Croatian court.
In Croatia, Vidic faces a prison sentence of 20 years in prison for that accusation, for which he was tried and convicted without being present.
In the United States, the man had “made a life” in which he worked as a butcher, had a family with two children and was a member of a church, as described by his lawyer, according to that medium. EFE
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