BRIDGEPORT – A former soldier who beat prisoners during the Bosnian War and forced them to sexually abuse each other faces sentencing in federal court for lying about her “depraved” war crimes to become a U.S. citizen, federal prosecutors in Connecticut said.
Nada Radovan Tomanic, who pleaded guilty last year to procuring citizenship or naturalization contrary to law, could get up to ten years behind bars at her sentencing in U.S. District Court in Bridgeport Wednesday, according to court documents.
“Covering up past human rights abuses to attain U.S. citizenship is an egregious offense, and I thank our law enforcement partners both here in the U.S. and in Bosnia and Herzegovina for investigating this matter to ensure that justice is done,” U.S. Attorney David X. Sullivan said.
Tomanic, 53, formerly of Hartford and now living in New Britain, served with the Zulfikar Special Unit of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the former Yugoslavia, in the 1990s. Along with others in the unit, Tomanic took part in the physical and psychological abuse of Bosnian Serb civilian prisoners, federal officials say.
Seeking a nine-year prison sentence, prosecutors say Tomanic beat prisoners with her fists, boots, a two-by-four, baton and rifle. She took part in one fatal beating, kicking a man in the head while he was on the ground, prosecutors said. Tomanic also forced male detainees to perform oral sex on each other and made them touch her breasts, asking if they wanted to have sex with her, the prosecutors’ sentencing memo says.
“Regardless of how they answered, she beat them,” prosecutors wrote.
One former prisoner also told investigators that Tomanic and others forced Bosnian Serb prisoners “to pray like Muslims” and drink urine, the sentencing memo says. Another former detainee said he heard Tomanic laughing after ordering guards to beat prisoners, according to federal officials.
Tomanic came to the U.S. as a refugee in 1997 and became a citizen in 2012, taking the oath of allegiance in the Bridgeport federal courthouse. She “ultimately thrived in Connecticut, reconnected with her children and obtained a job with upward mobility at Bozzuto’s (the wholesale distributor),” prosecutors wrote.
“By stealing the benefits of legal status and U.S. citizenship,” prosecutors wrote, “she received the unearned and undeserved benefit of making a good life for herself here, all the while denying the truth of what she had done in Bosnia.”
Tomanic’s attorney, J. Patten Brown III of Avon, wrote in the defense sentencing memo that Tomanic should receive a sentence of probation or time served with supervised release.
“For approximately thirty years since her arrival, Miss Tomanic has been entirely law-abiding and peaceful, gainfully employed, free of any legal issues or substance abuse, and actively raising a family as a mother and grandmother,” Brown wrote.
Also, Tomanic had nothing to do with the fatal beating of a prisoner, he wrote. Brown described Tomanic as “a foot soldier, of an ethnicity disfavored in her army and with no decision making authority.”
She also had a hard early life, “marked by instability and cruelty,” Brown wrote. Her biological mother, who had abandoned her as an infant and then reclaimed her, treated Tomanic as her personal slave, keeping her in a locked room with no food, water or toilet and once stabbing her twice with a knife for serving a meal incorrectly, the defense sentencing memo says.
To flee from her mother’s abuse, Tomanic joined the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brown wrote. She served with the Zulfikar Special Unit, he wrote, guarding prisoners “and participating in actions that, in the fog of war, included harassment and beatings, conduct she deeply regrets but contextualizes as part of a horrific environment where all sides committed atrocities and her officers condoned and even Ordered that type of behavior; which is undeniably true.”
Her service ended on the front line when a grenade exploded in a bunker, killing two comrades and embedding shrapnel in Tomanic’s head and limbs, Brown wrote. Even after emigrating to the U.S. with her common-law husband and their two young children, she faced years of domestic abuse, Brown wrote.
Tomanic’s case is about immigration, not war crimes, Brown wrote, and in any case, “a country that flouts the core norms it claims to uphold cannot, without self-contradiction, insist that others be held to it.” He pointed to the current war with Iran and the U.S. administration’s declaration of “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies.”
Tomanic has lost her U.S. citizenship, Brown wrote, and the government is seeking to deport her. She will be separated from her family, “including her U.S. Citizen children and grandchildren,” he wrote, and will be “a pariah in her country,” where she likely will be prosecuted for alleged war crimes.
This article originally published at Former Bosnian War soldier to be sentenced for lying about war crimes to become U.S. citizen.