Man’s citizenship bid reveals deadly secret

A man from Bosnia who shot someone in the heart during a deadly brawl — and then covered up the killing to come to Canada and get Canadian citizenship — has had his secret past revealed.

Bozidar Vujicic’s urge to start a new life in Canada came after his conviction for manslaughter but before starting his eight-year prison sentence.

Now living in British Columbia, he faces losing his Canadian status after the Federal Court of Canada ruled he fraudulently obtained his residency by hiding his conviction for the killing when he applied to come to Canada. Vujicic applied for permanent residency in Canada in 1999.

At the time, immigration officials interviewed him, reviewed his application and gave him permission to move to Canada. He arrived in 2002 and was granted permanent residence status and then Canadian citizenship. He swore his citizenship oath in 2006.

Three years later, however, Canada changed its mind about Vujicic, after learning more about his past, and started the process of citizenship revocation.

The Federal Court read translated court records from Serbia about a drunken brawl in Leskovac, in southern Serbia, in 1994.

Vujicic was named as an instigator of what seemed to be a large, nighttime fight involving several men, many of them later charged alongside him. Vujicic had been drinking, but his level of intoxication did not prevent him from understanding the significance of his actions, according to the evidence from Serbia.

During the brawl, Vujicic fired a gun in the direction of Dragan Stojanovic. A bullet hit Stojanovic in the heart and he bled to death, court heard.

Vujicic’s claim of selfdefence was rejected by the Serbian court. Not only was he among the aggressors, forensic evidence about the gunshot wound did not support his stance, court heard.

Vujicic was convicted of manslaughter in 1994, and again after a retrial in 1998. He was not immediately taken into custody, however.

He left court and, not long after, applied to come to Canada.

At the recent hearing in Canada into his citizenship status, Vujicic claimed the fact he was not taken to jail left him confused as to what had happened in court. He said he didn’t realize he had been convicted and sentenced.

Instead of talking to his trial lawyer about it, he applied to come to Canada.

He managed to be accepted into Canada despite the conviction after he presented two official certificates indicating he had no convictions against him — one was from Bosnia and one from Montenegro; neither of them from Serbia, where his conviction took place. All three countries were once part of Yugoslavia before its breakup.

He said he thought the certificates confirmed he had not been convicted.

Federal Court Justice James O’Reilly rejected his defence, saying he is satisfied Vujicic “failed to disclose his conviction for manslaughter in his application for permanent residence, knowing that he had been found guilty and sentenced for that offence in 1998. His conduct is consistent with an intention to deceive Canadian immigration officials.”

Vujicic did, however, get much of the government’s evidence against him thrown out of court because government officials improperly put it into the record.

Last week, O’Reilly ruled that since the government was successful on pressing only one of four grounds against Vujicic, Vujicic would only be ordered to pay 20 per cent of the government’s costs.