Woman sentenced to prison for lying to obtain U.S. Citizenship

Noman Sabit: A federal court in Connecticut has sentenced a woman to two-and-a-half years in prison for providing false information about her past in order to obtain U.S. citizenship. The woman, a Connecticut resident, was involved in war crimes in Bosnia but concealed that history.

At some point, Bosnian war criminal Nada Radovan Tomanić moved from Hartford to West Virginia, but distance could not shield her from the consequences of her actions.

On Wednesday, 53-year-old Tomanić was sentenced in federal court in Bridgeport. According to the office of U.S. Attorney David Sullivan, she concealed her criminal past when applying for U.S. citizenship in Hartford in 2012.

Prosecutors said that during the 1990s Bosnian war, Tomanić served in the “Zulfikar Special Unit” of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina. During that time, she and other members of her unit participated in the physical and psychological abuse of Bosnian Serb civilian prisoners, including acts of torture and inhumane treatment.

However, in her citizenship application, she claimed she had never worked at a detention facility or been involved in detaining individuals. She also falsely stated under oath that she had not committed any war crimes.

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Investigators found that she repeated these false claims during an interview with officials from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). On November 10, 2025, she pleaded guilty to unlawfully procuring U.S. citizenship.

Following the sentencing, law enforcement officials said justice had been served despite the passage of time, and they praised the cooperation between U.S. and Bosnian authorities.

Officials from the FBI’s New Haven Field Office noted that the case was not just about lying on immigration documents, but also about holding her accountable for her past acts of violence.

The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), with coordination from the Department of Homeland Security’s Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Center (HRVWCC) and USCIS’s Fraud Detection and National Security (FDNS) office, as well as the FBI’s International Human Rights Unit (IHRU).

The U.S. Department of Justice also thanked authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, including its Ministry of Justice and the Republika Srpska Ministry of Interior, as well as Serbian authorities and the United Nations’ International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, for their assistance in advancing the investigation.

The case was prosecuted by Trial Attorney Elizabeth Nielsen of the Justice Department’s Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section (HRSP), along with Assistant U.S. Attorneys Anastasia King and Angel Krull for the District of Connecticut, with support from HRSP historians. The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs also provided assistance.

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