BAD BEEF

Ohio Sausage Maker Accused of Serbia War Crimes

Jugoslav Vidic, a Cleveland-area meat purveyor, was convicted in absentia for allegedly murdering a Croatian civilian in 1991.

A Serbian sausage maker living in suburban Cleveland concealed a dark past as a war criminal in the former Yugoslavia, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday. The filing says 55-year-old Jugoslav Vidic of Parma Heights was convicted in absentia by a Croatian court in 1998 of participating in a 1991 attack on a meat processing plant by ethnic Serb forces, allegedly leading a Croatian former co-worker out of the building at gunpoint. The ex-colleague, a civilian who had been seen on TV shaking hands with then-Croatian president Franjo Tudjman, was never again seen alive, his body later exhumed from a mass grave, according to the feds. But Vidic, whose sausages were recalled in 2019 for lacking proper health and safety inspections, hid this fact from immigration officials when he applied for U.S. residency, “falsely stat[ing] that he had never participated in killing a person because of ethnic origin or political opinion,” the Department of Justice said in a press release. Vidic’s attorney did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.