Thread: Bosnian - sex crimes his undoing

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/l ... 92,00.html

Bosnian - sex crimes his undoing


Zvezdan Batanovic got his green card in 2001 but failed to stay out of trouble.
By Burt Hubbard, Rocky Mountain News
June 12, 2006
Bosnian-born Zvezdan Batanovic hadn't yet received his green card as he sat in the Arapahoe County jail on a 90-day sentence for domestic violence. It was his second conviction involving his girlfriend in less than a year.

When he got out of jail in 2001, he went to the immigration office at East 47th Avenue and Paris Street to complete the process of getting legal status. He says he showed officials the paperwork on his conviction — a violation potentially serious enough to get even a legal immigrant expelled from the U.S.

Instead, he got his green card — and, he recalls, a warning to stay out of trouble.

He didn't.

The 27-year-old is now in prison in Cañon City, convicted of sex crimes involving two 14-year-old girls, one in 2003, one in 2004. Not until he arrived at the state prison in September 2005 was he earmarked for deportation to Bosnia when his sentence ends as early as February 2007.

Batanovic was 13 when he fled war-torn Bosnia in the 1990s with his parents, Meho and Svetlana Batanovic, a Muslim and a Christian. They settled in Littleton.

In 2000, the family applied for legal status.

In July 2002, at age 23, Batanovic was arrested for sex assault after having sex with a 14-year-old girl in Littleton, according to Arapahoe County District Court records. He used the name Tyrone and told her he was 17, court files say.

He got four years probation in June 2003 after pleading guilty to sexual conduct with no consent. He was told to register as a sex offender and ordered not to have contact with anyone under the age of 18, court records show.

Less than a year later in January 2004, he was arrested again for sexual assault for fondling another 14-year-old, this time in Centennial. When the girl's mother confronted him, he threatened her, according to court documents.

He pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation of a child and was sentenced to six years in prison for the 2004 case and violating terms of probation in the earlier case. "It was my bad choice," Batanovic said in a prison interview.

Just before he was transferred to the Fremont prison in September 2004, corrections officials handed him a piece of paper informing him that he could be deported to Bosnia after he finished his sentence, he said.

His parents said they will go with Zvezdan back to Bosnia. "It's way too dangerous for him," Svetlana Batanovic said.

Half of the illegals in this country will be guest in our prison systems, and the other half will be taking over our jobs,,,,,ALL at the American tax payers expense.