Bosnia and Herzegovina is a small, nearly landlocked country in Eastern Europe. A former part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, it gained its independence during the Bosnian War in the 1990s. Bosniak Muslim Nina Zergin fled the country with her brother Milan during the war, as did the family Rodchenko. Serbian soldiers Simon Matic and Stefan Tanzic fought in the war, and both committed numerous rapes (at least three of Tanzic's victims, Anya Ragova, Marta Stevens, and Ileana Jashari fled shortly after).
The violence grew to a point where the international community intervened. Missile engineer Andrew Croft travelled to Bosnia with his ward Michael Goren to consult on the aerial bombing campaign initiated by the United States Air Force. (SVU: "Wrong Is Right")
The fallout from the Bosnian War spilled over to the United States. Tanzic and Matic both emigrated to the US to avoid prosecution for their war crimes and settled in New York City; Tanzic took a false name, Steven Panacek, and started a family. As luck would have it, Tanzic's victims arrived in the same city. In 2000, Ragova and Stevens both encountered Tanzic. Seeking vengeance, they murdered and castrated him in his cab. (SVU: "Payback")
In 2002, Simon Matic re-emerged on the law-enforcement radar when he kidnapped the family of Lucas Colter, an embezzling exec who'd borrowed a lot of money from a loan shark in an effort to cover up his crimes. The loan shark had hired Matic to kidnap Colter's family to give him an incentive to pay, but Matic raped Colter's teenaged daughter Maggie, who memorized the tattoo on his back. When she later reproduced the tattoo for the police, Matic was arrested and turned over to international law enforcement to face prosecution for war crimes. (CI: "Homo Homini Lupis")
Further reading[]
- Bosnia and Herzegovina at Wikipedia