Informazione
Il terrorismo "buono" / 2 (english)
1. Guantanamo: Australian Al-Qaeda Militant Ex 'Freedom Fighter' In
Kosovo, Kashmir (July 2003)
2. Bin Laden’s Balkan Connections (Scott Taylor, December 2001)
=== 1 ===
Da: Rick Rozoff
Data: Mar 8 Lug 2003 18:47:08 Europe/Rome
A: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Oggetto: [yugoslaviainfo] Guantanamo: Australian Al-Qaeda Militant Ex
'Freedom Fighter' In Kosovo, Kashmir
http://www.ptd.net/webnews/wed/bs/Qaustralia-attacks-us.RnsH_Dl8.html
[Note: The second feature, below, is from a
transparently Ustashe Internet site [see:
http://www.cfiva.org/cfiva/home/index.cfm?CFID=345918&CFTOKEN=99319605]
and is only reproduced because it says more than it
intends to, both about David Hicks' involvement in
Kosovo and the Indian state of Kashmir and about the
close - inseparable - ties between the neo-Ustashe in
Croatia and the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army in
Serbia.]
Australian held by US military was trained by
al-Qaeda, PM reveals
SYDNEY, July 8 (AFP) - Australian-born Taliban fighter
David Hicks, who is now in US military detention, has
admitted training with the al-Qaeda terrorist network,
Prime Minister John Howard revealed for the first time
Tuesday.
Howard's disclosure came as US lawyers protested that
Hicks will not receive a fair trial by a US military
tribunal because he is being denied proper access to
legal representation.
The 27-year-old former Adelaide poultry process worker
has been held by the US military at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, since he was captured fighting with the Taliban
by US forces in Afghanistan in November, 2001.
Hicks' lawyers have conceded he was a Taliban fighter
but denied persistent allegations he had links to
al-Qaeda.
But Howard said the government was satisfied that
Hicks would receive a fair trial and that he was
linked to al-Qaeda.
"What is not an allegation, because the man in
question has admitted it, is that he trained with
al-Qaeda," Howard told ABC radio when asked about
Hicks.
Howard said the government had lengthy discussions
with US officials about the case and was satisfied
that Hicks would receive a fair hearing, that the
presumption of innocence would prevail and that there
would be access to lawyers.
One of Hicks' Adelaide-based lawyers, Frank Camatta,
said he was shocked by the prime minister's comments.
"It's a total surprise to us," he said.
"We have no basis to understand that to be the case.
Maybe the prime minister has had access to briefings
from the security services.
"We would have been very pleased to have been told
that, rather than hear it through the media. Why he
would say that without at least letting the family
know is disappointing."
Hicks was named by the US administration last week as
one of an initial group of six detainees eligible to
be tried by a US military tribunal, although no date
has been set for a hearing and no charge has yet been
laid.
His family has appointed a civilian legal team,
although his lawyers say he is being denied the usual
confidentiality between lawyer and client, which is a
basic tenet of legal representation, and without which
they say it would be virtually impossible for him to
receive a fair trial.
Hicks' US-based lawyer Joseph Margulies said there was
scant chance of a fair trial.
"They would never countenance these kinds of
proceedings in an Australian court," Margulies told
ABC radio.
"One of the real problems with the tribunal is that it
is not transparent. We may never shed light on that
dark corner."
US National Association of Criminal Defence Lawyers
(NACDL) president Lawrence Goldman said the military
court was likely to be biased because the judges, who
would probably be senior officers would find it
difficult to acquit someone whom the president of the
United States has recommended for trial.
"I would not walk into these trials as a defence
lawyer with the confidence that my client would get a
fair shake," he said.
Al-Qaeda expert Rohan Gunaratna, who has written
extensively about Osama bin Laden's terrorist network
and who initially described Hicks as a "small fry" in
the terror organisation, now believes he was more than
a foot soldier.
"There is more recent information to indicate that he
has undergone more advanced and more specialised
training," Gunaratna told The Australian newspaper.
---
http://www.cfiva.org/cfiva/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=showItem&newsID=13
Croatian Forces International Volunteers Association
CFIVA News
KOSOVO VOLUNTEER LINKED TO AL-QAEDA
Thursday, August 1, 2002
David Hicks training with the UCK prior to joining the
Taliban
-The details of his service in Kosova [sic] come to us
direct from the UCK and are as follows:
He joined a group of the UCK circa February 1999. He
was accommodated at one of three UCK training camps in
the Tropolje area in Albania for six weeks. He was
moved to another UCK training camp as a prospective
instructor after he made exaggerated claims about
being in the Australian Army.
-[H]e was placed on active duty near the border town
of Kukes with 139 Brigade, commanded by Radimas
Beshim.
-He was demobilised in June 1999, went back to the
Albanian capital Tirana where the UCK purchased an
aeroplane ticket for the Islamic Republic of Iran (via
Germany) at Hicks’ own request.
-He returned to Australia in late 1999 and claimed to
have been through six weeks training, boasted he had
been in the trenches, killed a few Serbs....
-The Australian government says he...went to Pakistan
and trained with the militant Islamic group
Lashkar-i-Taiba who are fighting in the Kashmir region
against the Indian Army. This group is believed to
have links with Al-Qa’eda and Osama Bin Laden.
-[H]icks has been blacklisted by CFIVA for bringing
the international volunteer movement [sic] in Kosova
into disrepute.
More On Terrorist Suspect Hicks - On 1st August the
Australian ex-volunteer failed to obtain a trial.
American judges ruled that because he was being held
at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, United States civilian courts
had no jurisdiction. He therefore remains indefinitely
detained without trial.
The case of Hicks is already being widely mis-reported
as international journalists studiously avoid checking
their information with other sources. Under the
ridiculous label "Soldier of Fortune," CNN state that
Hicks converted to Islam whilst fighting with the UCK
in "Bosnia" (huh??) and mis-labelled a grainy
photograph of Hicks taken in Albania in 1999 as being
in "Bosnia." We can categorically state that Hicks
never served in BiH.
He surrendered to Northern Alliance forces in
Afghanistan on 9th December 2001 near the Tora Bora
caves complex used by Al-Qa’eda. He has no criminal
record nor was he involved in any military activity
prior to Kosova. In early 1999 he approached Channel 7
wanting to sell a story about fighting as a mercenary
in South Africa or Afghanistan.
The details of his service in Kosova comes to us
direct from the UCK and are as follows:
He joined a group of the UCK circa February 1999. He
was accommodated at one of three UCK training camps in
the Tropolje area in Albania for six weeks. He was
moved to another UCK training camp as a prospective
instructor after he made exaggerated claims about
being in the Australian Army. He had no previous
military experience whatsoever. It soon became
apparent these assertions were false and his claims
were widely dismissed by the UCK. Nevertheless he was
placed on active duty near the border town of Kukes
with 139 Brigade, commanded by Radimas Beshim. His
incompetence soon came to notice and he was relegated
to a training camp away from the border. He was given
a second chance and rejoined the brigade in Kukes but
still couldn’t manage (remember, the UCK itself was a
largely untrained citizen army) so he was relegated
again to a training camp and effectively kept out of
the way. After NATO troops entered Kosova Hicks did
not accompany any UCK units into the province. He was
demobilised in June 1999, went back to the Albanian
capital Tirana where the UCK purchased an aeroplane
ticket for the Islamic Republic of Iran (via Germany)
at Hicks’ own request. The Kosovan authorities have
heard nothing from him since. He was in Albania for no
more than 14-16 weeks and never entered Kosova.
Hicks was not a mercenary. He was legally recruited
into a legitimate armed force and at all times abided
by the terms and conditions of the Geneva Conventions.
CFIVA can confirm that Hicks was never paid more than
that of a private soldier of the UCK, if at all.
Note: It was usual for the UCK to reward its
international volunteers with their passage home, as a
gesture of thanks.
He returned to Australia in late 1999 and claimed to
have been through six weeks training, boasted he had
been in the trenches, killed a few Serbs and had seen
a few of his comrades killed. The last two points are
a mild exaggeration but have neither been proven or
disproved.
Upon his return to Australia (not Bosnia)he converted
to Islam and took the name Mohammed Dawood. He was
attending a mosque several times a week but in
November 1999 spoke of going to Pakistan to increase
his knowledge of Islam. Within a week or two he had
left the country.
The Australian government says he then went to
Pakistan and trained with the militant Islamic group
Lashkar-i-Taiba who are fighting in the Kashmir region
against the Indian Army. This group is believed to
have links with Al-Qa’eda and Osama Bin Laden.
The Americans say he entered Afghanistan in late 2000
and undertook "extensive" training with Al-Qa’eda. He
telephoned his family on September 28th to say he was
fighting for the Taliban.
After his capture, he was handed over to US Special
Forces and transferred via the USS Peleliu to the
detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Two other
white Australians are also being held there. The US
say they will hand him over to the Australian
authorities if it can be promised that Hicks will be
dealt with severely. He could be charged with treason
and murder if he is connected to the WTC attacks in
New York on September 11th. He could also be charged
under the Foreign Incursions Act, which carries a 14
year sentence for “hostile activities in foreign
countries.” Needless to say Serb websites have been
doing overtime on this one.
Apparently Hicks has now hoodwinked gullible
interrogators into believing he was a "relatively
senior member of Al-Qaeda." true to form, Hicks
completely fails to comprehend the seriousness of his
situation. Nobody of course has bothered to check
Hicks' past with the Kosovan authorities. Regardless
of whether he is found guilty of the charges levelled
against him, Hicks has been blacklisted by CFIVA for
bringing the international volunteer movement in
Kosova into disrepute.
The Secretary
=== 2 ===
The Ottawa Citizen // Saturday Oserver// Dec. 15, 2001
Page B3
Bin Laden’s Balkan Connections
Dateline: Skopje, Macedonia
By Scott Taylor
With the swift collapse of the Taliban regime, the U.S.-led military
campaign in Afghanistan has been reduced to an Osama bin Laden manhunt
cum mop-up of the Al-Qaeda network. As U.S. jets pound the cave
entrances around
Tora Bora, Special Forces teams are closing in on the last redoubts of
Taliban fanatics. Following the quick success in Afghanistan, President
George Bush has already warned Americans to prepare for a "wider war"
aimed at punishing those nations which "harbour terrorism." Although
there was no
proven link between Iraq and the anthrax scare, in recent speeches Bush
has repeatedly singled out Saddam Hussein as "an enemy of the U.S."
Similar ominous threats have been levelled at the governments of Sudan,
Libya, Syria and the leaders of Palestinian extremist groups.
While it is believed that Saudi-born Osama bin Laden remains surrounded
in Afghanistan, U.S. Intelligence agencies cannot be sure of his exact
whereabouts. What is known is that his extensive Al-Qaeda terrorist
organisation still has operating cells around the world.
As the U.S. dragnet is cast ever wider, it can only be a matter of time
before the counter-terrorist effort revisits the Balkans. Over the past
decade, Mujahadeen fighters – and in particular, bin Laden’s followers
– have practised their brutal brand of terror in Croatia, Bosnia,
Kosovo and are currently believed to be participating in Macedonia’s
civil unrest.
On 20 November, while the Taliban was still offering organised
resistance and extremists from around the world were volunteering to
join their ranks, Pakistani police apprehended five of these Muslim
"fighters" carrying Macedonian passports at the Afghan border.
For Macedonian Intelligence officials, these arrests were only further
proof that Mujahadeen formed the veteran core of the ethnic Albanian
guerrilla army known as the UCK. Since March of this year, the UCK have
mounted a very successful military offensive against Macedonian
security forces. By the time that a shaky peace plan was brokered in
September, the UCK controlled nearly 30 per cent of Macedonian
territory. Originally inexperienced and ill-equipped to fight a
guerrilla war, the Macedonian security forces have maintained since the
outbreak of hostilities that up to 120 Mujahadeen were active in the
UCK ranks.
Nikola, a senior director with Macedonian Intelligence, confirmed that
following the 11 September terrorist attacks, his agency has "supplied
a substantive dossier to the CIA," outlining bin Laden’s Balkan
activities.
The information forwarded to the CIA included eyewitness accounts
offered by Macedonian civilians who had been held hostage by
Mujahadeen, along with incriminating photographs and videos, which
security forces captured from the UCK-Albanian guerrillas.
Macedonian Minister of Interior Ljubo Boskovski is anxious for his
police forces to return into the areas presently controlled by the
Albanian guerrillas in order to uncover additional evidence. Since 13
November, Macedonian security forces have been conducting an exhumation
at a mass grave outside the ethnic Albanian village of Trebos. To date,
the police have unearthed the bodies of six Macedonians, from a total
of 21 civilians who have disappeared following UCK attacks.
Intelligence officer Nikola believes it was Mujahadeen fighters who
perpetrated the Trebos massacre "because of the manner in which the
bodies were cut up and scattered."
Nikola also suspects that Mujahadeen fanatics perpetrated a brutal
ambush against security forces last April. In this incident, eight
policemen were shot outside the village of Vejce, their bodies
viciously dismembered to provide the victors with grisly trophies. The
Macedonian authorities are not the only ones to affix the blame for the
Vejce ambush on the Mujahadeen.
During the summer offensive around Tetovo, Albanian guerrillas eagerly
admitted they had gained combat experience in previous conflicts.
Twenty-three-year old Commander "Jimmy" claimed he was a veteran of
Chechnya and Kosovo, while "Snake" Arifaq bragged of service in Bosnia
and displayed a scar he received during the fighting in Croatia. Both
of these Albanians
acknowledged the involvement of Arab/Afghan "volunteers" in training
members of the UCK. As for the Vejce incident, Commander Jimmy said
such an atrocity could "only have been committed by the Foreigners
[Mujahadeen serving in the
UCK] because Albanians do not cut up bodies."
Once the UCK insurrection began in March, the Macedonian government
hastily acquired a fleet of six Ukrainian helicopter gunships to
provide their troops with tactical air support. "Shortly after that,
our pilots reported being tracked by sophisticated [U.S.-made] Stinger
[anti-aircraft] missiles," said Nikola. "It is the information [of
Macedonian Intelligence] that the UCK received these Stingers from
their Mujahadeen connections in Afghanistan."
American advisors and covert military aid have also contributed to the
UCK’s combat effectiveness, but since 11 September the Macedonians have
noted a shift in U.S. foreign policy. "The CIA have been much more
receptive to our reports about the Al-Qaeda," said Nikola.
"Particularly after they
discovered that one of the suicide hijackers had been active in both
Kosovo and Macedonia."
Given their common goal of neutralising Albanian terrorists, Macedonian
police have been working closely with their Yugoslavian counterparts.
More importantly, as part of the U.S.-led global initiative to combat
terror, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has been reinstated to the
ranks of Interpol – after a ten-year banishment. As a result,
Intelligence Officers from the
Yugoslavian Army have been able to supply their international
colleagues with a wealth of information outlining Mujahadeen activity
in Bosnia and Kosovo. Yugoslav Intelligence believes that at least 50
of the 150 Mujahadeen that fought in Kosovo are still active members of
the UCK.
Even without this Yugoslav co-operation, Interpol was already tracking
the Al-Qaeda’s Balkan activities. On 23 October this year, Interpol
released a preliminary report outlining bin Laden’s personal links to
the Albanian Mafia. In this report, Interpol alleges that a senior
Al-Qaeda lieutenant had been the commander of an elite UCK unit in
Kosovo during the fighting in 1999.
While U.S. President Bill Clinton’s regime was the driving force to
garner NATO support for the UCK, numerous media reports clearly show
that the CIA were well aware of bin Laden’s Albanian links prior to
NATO’s commitment in Kosovo.
On 17 January 1999 the international press was filled with news of an
alleged massacre of 45 Albanian Kosovars in the village of Racak.
Clinton seized upon this particular incident (later disproved, by UN
pathologists, to have been an Albanian hoax) to proclaim that the West
could no longer overlook "Serbian atrocities." With Clinton’s
statement, NATO was
irrevocably launched on the path towards its confrontation with
Yugoslavia.
Although lost in the U.S. media hype, Greek media outlets that same day
were detailing the Taliban’s widespread entry into Albania at the
invitation of ex-President Sali Berisa and former head of Intelligence
Bashkim Gazidede.
According to The Tribune, an Athens daily newspaper, Albanian security
official Fatos Klozi confirmed that "bin Laden was one of those who had
organised and sent groups to fight in Kosovo. There were Egyptians,
Saudis, Algerians, Tunisians, Sudanese and Kuwaitis from different
organisations
among the [UCK] mercenaries."
Ten days later, on 27 January 1999, the Arab-language news service Al
Hayat reported that an Albanian commander in Kosovo, code-named
"Monia," was directly connected to Osama bin Laden. The Al Hayat piece
also proudly proclaimed that "at least 100 Muslim Mujahadeen" were
serving with Monia’s force in Kosovo.
The Washington Post reported in August 1998 that the CIA were not only
aware of bin Laden’s association with the Albanian regime, but that
U.S. operatives had been "prominent" in the arrest of four Al-Qaeda
agents in Tirana. At that time, U.S. State Department officials even
speculated that
the bombings of their embassies in Kenya and Tanzania might have been
bin Laden’s revenge for the Tirana arrests.
The Al-Qaeda suspects detained by the CIA in Albania had been operating
the Islamic Revival Foundation, "a charitable organisation that
official sources say provided a useful cover for the [suspects] efforts
on behalf of bin Laden," reported the Post.
In February 1998, the U.S. State Department had removed the UCK from
their list of terrorist organisations. However later that same year,
the CIA and their Albanian SHIK intelligence counterparts co-operated
to successfully shut down a Mujahadeen Jihad cell operating in
conjunction with the
Albanians inside Kosovo.
Some of the most revealing links surfaced in December 1998 when
Al-Qaeda agent Claude Sheik Abdel-Kader was arrested in Tirana for the
murder of his Albanian translator. During his trial, Abdel-Kader
confessed to being a senior commander in bin Laden’s network, and
claimed he had recruited a force of some 300 Mujahadeen to fight in
Kosovo. European media covering the trial reported Abdul-Kader’s
revelation that Osama bin Laden – although a wanted terrorist –
travelled freely to Tirana in 1994 and 1998 to meet with senior
Albanian officials. Abdel-Kader also confessed that when the Albanian
regime of Sali Berisa collapsed into anarchy in 1997, state armouries
and government offices were looted. Many of the 10,000 heavy weapons
and 100,000 passports that went missing conveniently fell into the
hands of the Al-Qaeda.
Osama bin Laden – stripped of his Saudi citizenship in 1994 – is
alleged to have retained the Bosnian passport he was issued in Vienna
in 1993. The granting of official travel documents to bin Laden was
first reported 24 September 1999 by Dani, a Bosnian Muslim weekly
newspaper. The rationale
behind bestowing citizenship on a wanted terrorist was that Bosnian
President Alija Izetbegovic had been thankful for the Mujahadeen’s
contribution in his quest for a Balkan "fundamentalist Islamic
Republic."
It was also reported by Dani that Al-Qaeda terrorist Mehrez Aodouni had
been arrested in Istanbul while carrying a Bosnian passport. Like bin
Laden, his citizenship had been granted "because he was a member of the
Bosnia-Herzegovina Army."
Canadian soldiers serving with the United Nations Protection Force
(UNPROFOR) were among the first to report the presence of Mujahadeen in
the ranks of the Bosnian Muslims as early as 1992.
The Asian Wall Street Journal reported that, in 1993, bin Laden had
appointed Al Zawahiri, the Al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, to direct all
his operations in the Balkans.
While no exact numbers exist, it is estimated that between 1500 and
3500 Arab volunteers participated in the Bosnian civil war. Their main
area of operation was in the region of Zenica, with most Mujahadeen
serving in the 7th Brigade of General Sakib Mahmuljin’s 3rd Corps,
nicknamed "the
Guerrillas." Identified by red and green "Rambo" bandannas emblazoned
with the crest "our road is Jihad," this unit earned a reputation for
criminal brutality.
On 27 June 1993, the Sunday Times reported that even Bosnian Muslim
officers had reservations about the Mujahadeen volunteers. Colonel
Stjepan Siber, then-Deputy Commander of the Bosnia-Herzegovina Army,
admitted to the Times that "It was a mistake to let [the Mujahadeen] in
here… They commit most of the atrocities and work against the interests
of the Muslim people. They have been killing, looting and stealing."
According to reports, it was the Mujahadeen who were serving with
General Nasir Oric in the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica who committed
some of the most barbaric atrocities of the war. Beheadings of Serbian
civilians were commonplace, and in some villages the Mujahadeen would
dynamite homes with
the inhabitants trapped inside.
No attempt was made to hide such atrocities. In fact, General Oric
would often address media at the site of the massacres. On one such
occasion, while standing in front of Mujahadeen brandishing human head
trophies, Oric pointed to a flaming ruin and proudly said to reporters,
"We blew those Serbs to the moon."
Alija Izetbegovic was also proud to display the fighting prowess of his
Mujahadeen volunteers. Following a successful attack against Serbian
positions around Vozuce on 10 September 1995, the Bosnian President
held a televised medal presentation parade. The Mujahadeen had provided
the
vanguard of the assault force, and were awarded 11 decorations for
valour, including the Golden Crescent, Bosnia’s highest honour.
Yugoslav Intelligence estimates that over 1500 Bosnian citizenships
were granted to Mujahadeen/Al-Qaeda fighters following the Dayton Peace
Accord in 1995. Most of those soldiers are believed to have settled in
the Zenica region.
According to Miroslav Lazanski, author of the new book Osama bin Laden
Against America, Al-Qaeda still maintain two operational bases in
Bosnia. One of these contains only the best fighters and was commanded
by an Algerian, Abu Al Mali.
Following the 11 September attacks, FBI and CIA agents uncovered
evidence that two of the suicide hijackers had originated from this
Bosnian camp. Abu Mali was subsequently arrested while travelling in
Istanbul on a Bosnian passport.
It is evident from recent events that the U.S. military is also well
aware of the continued Mujahadeen presence in the Balkans. General
Myers visited NATO troops stationed in Bosnia in late November to warn
them against a possible Al-Qaeda retaliation attack. In addition, on 4
December, the White
House added two Albanian terrorist groups operating in Macedonia and
Kosovo to their list of outlawed organisations.
President George Bush’s campaign against bin Laden’s terrorists would
appear to have come full circle to confront the Clinton
administration’s dubious Balkan legacy.
1. Guantanamo: Australian Al-Qaeda Militant Ex 'Freedom Fighter' In
Kosovo, Kashmir (July 2003)
2. Bin Laden’s Balkan Connections (Scott Taylor, December 2001)
=== 1 ===
Da: Rick Rozoff
Data: Mar 8 Lug 2003 18:47:08 Europe/Rome
A: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Oggetto: [yugoslaviainfo] Guantanamo: Australian Al-Qaeda Militant Ex
'Freedom Fighter' In Kosovo, Kashmir
http://www.ptd.net/webnews/wed/bs/Qaustralia-attacks-us.RnsH_Dl8.html
[Note: The second feature, below, is from a
transparently Ustashe Internet site [see:
http://www.cfiva.org/cfiva/home/index.cfm?CFID=345918&CFTOKEN=99319605]
and is only reproduced because it says more than it
intends to, both about David Hicks' involvement in
Kosovo and the Indian state of Kashmir and about the
close - inseparable - ties between the neo-Ustashe in
Croatia and the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army in
Serbia.]
Australian held by US military was trained by
al-Qaeda, PM reveals
SYDNEY, July 8 (AFP) - Australian-born Taliban fighter
David Hicks, who is now in US military detention, has
admitted training with the al-Qaeda terrorist network,
Prime Minister John Howard revealed for the first time
Tuesday.
Howard's disclosure came as US lawyers protested that
Hicks will not receive a fair trial by a US military
tribunal because he is being denied proper access to
legal representation.
The 27-year-old former Adelaide poultry process worker
has been held by the US military at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, since he was captured fighting with the Taliban
by US forces in Afghanistan in November, 2001.
Hicks' lawyers have conceded he was a Taliban fighter
but denied persistent allegations he had links to
al-Qaeda.
But Howard said the government was satisfied that
Hicks would receive a fair trial and that he was
linked to al-Qaeda.
"What is not an allegation, because the man in
question has admitted it, is that he trained with
al-Qaeda," Howard told ABC radio when asked about
Hicks.
Howard said the government had lengthy discussions
with US officials about the case and was satisfied
that Hicks would receive a fair hearing, that the
presumption of innocence would prevail and that there
would be access to lawyers.
One of Hicks' Adelaide-based lawyers, Frank Camatta,
said he was shocked by the prime minister's comments.
"It's a total surprise to us," he said.
"We have no basis to understand that to be the case.
Maybe the prime minister has had access to briefings
from the security services.
"We would have been very pleased to have been told
that, rather than hear it through the media. Why he
would say that without at least letting the family
know is disappointing."
Hicks was named by the US administration last week as
one of an initial group of six detainees eligible to
be tried by a US military tribunal, although no date
has been set for a hearing and no charge has yet been
laid.
His family has appointed a civilian legal team,
although his lawyers say he is being denied the usual
confidentiality between lawyer and client, which is a
basic tenet of legal representation, and without which
they say it would be virtually impossible for him to
receive a fair trial.
Hicks' US-based lawyer Joseph Margulies said there was
scant chance of a fair trial.
"They would never countenance these kinds of
proceedings in an Australian court," Margulies told
ABC radio.
"One of the real problems with the tribunal is that it
is not transparent. We may never shed light on that
dark corner."
US National Association of Criminal Defence Lawyers
(NACDL) president Lawrence Goldman said the military
court was likely to be biased because the judges, who
would probably be senior officers would find it
difficult to acquit someone whom the president of the
United States has recommended for trial.
"I would not walk into these trials as a defence
lawyer with the confidence that my client would get a
fair shake," he said.
Al-Qaeda expert Rohan Gunaratna, who has written
extensively about Osama bin Laden's terrorist network
and who initially described Hicks as a "small fry" in
the terror organisation, now believes he was more than
a foot soldier.
"There is more recent information to indicate that he
has undergone more advanced and more specialised
training," Gunaratna told The Australian newspaper.
---
http://www.cfiva.org/cfiva/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=showItem&newsID=13
Croatian Forces International Volunteers Association
CFIVA News
KOSOVO VOLUNTEER LINKED TO AL-QAEDA
Thursday, August 1, 2002
David Hicks training with the UCK prior to joining the
Taliban
-The details of his service in Kosova [sic] come to us
direct from the UCK and are as follows:
He joined a group of the UCK circa February 1999. He
was accommodated at one of three UCK training camps in
the Tropolje area in Albania for six weeks. He was
moved to another UCK training camp as a prospective
instructor after he made exaggerated claims about
being in the Australian Army.
-[H]e was placed on active duty near the border town
of Kukes with 139 Brigade, commanded by Radimas
Beshim.
-He was demobilised in June 1999, went back to the
Albanian capital Tirana where the UCK purchased an
aeroplane ticket for the Islamic Republic of Iran (via
Germany) at Hicks’ own request.
-He returned to Australia in late 1999 and claimed to
have been through six weeks training, boasted he had
been in the trenches, killed a few Serbs....
-The Australian government says he...went to Pakistan
and trained with the militant Islamic group
Lashkar-i-Taiba who are fighting in the Kashmir region
against the Indian Army. This group is believed to
have links with Al-Qa’eda and Osama Bin Laden.
-[H]icks has been blacklisted by CFIVA for bringing
the international volunteer movement [sic] in Kosova
into disrepute.
More On Terrorist Suspect Hicks - On 1st August the
Australian ex-volunteer failed to obtain a trial.
American judges ruled that because he was being held
at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, United States civilian courts
had no jurisdiction. He therefore remains indefinitely
detained without trial.
The case of Hicks is already being widely mis-reported
as international journalists studiously avoid checking
their information with other sources. Under the
ridiculous label "Soldier of Fortune," CNN state that
Hicks converted to Islam whilst fighting with the UCK
in "Bosnia" (huh??) and mis-labelled a grainy
photograph of Hicks taken in Albania in 1999 as being
in "Bosnia." We can categorically state that Hicks
never served in BiH.
He surrendered to Northern Alliance forces in
Afghanistan on 9th December 2001 near the Tora Bora
caves complex used by Al-Qa’eda. He has no criminal
record nor was he involved in any military activity
prior to Kosova. In early 1999 he approached Channel 7
wanting to sell a story about fighting as a mercenary
in South Africa or Afghanistan.
The details of his service in Kosova comes to us
direct from the UCK and are as follows:
He joined a group of the UCK circa February 1999. He
was accommodated at one of three UCK training camps in
the Tropolje area in Albania for six weeks. He was
moved to another UCK training camp as a prospective
instructor after he made exaggerated claims about
being in the Australian Army. He had no previous
military experience whatsoever. It soon became
apparent these assertions were false and his claims
were widely dismissed by the UCK. Nevertheless he was
placed on active duty near the border town of Kukes
with 139 Brigade, commanded by Radimas Beshim. His
incompetence soon came to notice and he was relegated
to a training camp away from the border. He was given
a second chance and rejoined the brigade in Kukes but
still couldn’t manage (remember, the UCK itself was a
largely untrained citizen army) so he was relegated
again to a training camp and effectively kept out of
the way. After NATO troops entered Kosova Hicks did
not accompany any UCK units into the province. He was
demobilised in June 1999, went back to the Albanian
capital Tirana where the UCK purchased an aeroplane
ticket for the Islamic Republic of Iran (via Germany)
at Hicks’ own request. The Kosovan authorities have
heard nothing from him since. He was in Albania for no
more than 14-16 weeks and never entered Kosova.
Hicks was not a mercenary. He was legally recruited
into a legitimate armed force and at all times abided
by the terms and conditions of the Geneva Conventions.
CFIVA can confirm that Hicks was never paid more than
that of a private soldier of the UCK, if at all.
Note: It was usual for the UCK to reward its
international volunteers with their passage home, as a
gesture of thanks.
He returned to Australia in late 1999 and claimed to
have been through six weeks training, boasted he had
been in the trenches, killed a few Serbs and had seen
a few of his comrades killed. The last two points are
a mild exaggeration but have neither been proven or
disproved.
Upon his return to Australia (not Bosnia)he converted
to Islam and took the name Mohammed Dawood. He was
attending a mosque several times a week but in
November 1999 spoke of going to Pakistan to increase
his knowledge of Islam. Within a week or two he had
left the country.
The Australian government says he then went to
Pakistan and trained with the militant Islamic group
Lashkar-i-Taiba who are fighting in the Kashmir region
against the Indian Army. This group is believed to
have links with Al-Qa’eda and Osama Bin Laden.
The Americans say he entered Afghanistan in late 2000
and undertook "extensive" training with Al-Qa’eda. He
telephoned his family on September 28th to say he was
fighting for the Taliban.
After his capture, he was handed over to US Special
Forces and transferred via the USS Peleliu to the
detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Two other
white Australians are also being held there. The US
say they will hand him over to the Australian
authorities if it can be promised that Hicks will be
dealt with severely. He could be charged with treason
and murder if he is connected to the WTC attacks in
New York on September 11th. He could also be charged
under the Foreign Incursions Act, which carries a 14
year sentence for “hostile activities in foreign
countries.” Needless to say Serb websites have been
doing overtime on this one.
Apparently Hicks has now hoodwinked gullible
interrogators into believing he was a "relatively
senior member of Al-Qaeda." true to form, Hicks
completely fails to comprehend the seriousness of his
situation. Nobody of course has bothered to check
Hicks' past with the Kosovan authorities. Regardless
of whether he is found guilty of the charges levelled
against him, Hicks has been blacklisted by CFIVA for
bringing the international volunteer movement in
Kosova into disrepute.
The Secretary
=== 2 ===
The Ottawa Citizen // Saturday Oserver// Dec. 15, 2001
Page B3
Bin Laden’s Balkan Connections
Dateline: Skopje, Macedonia
By Scott Taylor
With the swift collapse of the Taliban regime, the U.S.-led military
campaign in Afghanistan has been reduced to an Osama bin Laden manhunt
cum mop-up of the Al-Qaeda network. As U.S. jets pound the cave
entrances around
Tora Bora, Special Forces teams are closing in on the last redoubts of
Taliban fanatics. Following the quick success in Afghanistan, President
George Bush has already warned Americans to prepare for a "wider war"
aimed at punishing those nations which "harbour terrorism." Although
there was no
proven link between Iraq and the anthrax scare, in recent speeches Bush
has repeatedly singled out Saddam Hussein as "an enemy of the U.S."
Similar ominous threats have been levelled at the governments of Sudan,
Libya, Syria and the leaders of Palestinian extremist groups.
While it is believed that Saudi-born Osama bin Laden remains surrounded
in Afghanistan, U.S. Intelligence agencies cannot be sure of his exact
whereabouts. What is known is that his extensive Al-Qaeda terrorist
organisation still has operating cells around the world.
As the U.S. dragnet is cast ever wider, it can only be a matter of time
before the counter-terrorist effort revisits the Balkans. Over the past
decade, Mujahadeen fighters – and in particular, bin Laden’s followers
– have practised their brutal brand of terror in Croatia, Bosnia,
Kosovo and are currently believed to be participating in Macedonia’s
civil unrest.
On 20 November, while the Taliban was still offering organised
resistance and extremists from around the world were volunteering to
join their ranks, Pakistani police apprehended five of these Muslim
"fighters" carrying Macedonian passports at the Afghan border.
For Macedonian Intelligence officials, these arrests were only further
proof that Mujahadeen formed the veteran core of the ethnic Albanian
guerrilla army known as the UCK. Since March of this year, the UCK have
mounted a very successful military offensive against Macedonian
security forces. By the time that a shaky peace plan was brokered in
September, the UCK controlled nearly 30 per cent of Macedonian
territory. Originally inexperienced and ill-equipped to fight a
guerrilla war, the Macedonian security forces have maintained since the
outbreak of hostilities that up to 120 Mujahadeen were active in the
UCK ranks.
Nikola, a senior director with Macedonian Intelligence, confirmed that
following the 11 September terrorist attacks, his agency has "supplied
a substantive dossier to the CIA," outlining bin Laden’s Balkan
activities.
The information forwarded to the CIA included eyewitness accounts
offered by Macedonian civilians who had been held hostage by
Mujahadeen, along with incriminating photographs and videos, which
security forces captured from the UCK-Albanian guerrillas.
Macedonian Minister of Interior Ljubo Boskovski is anxious for his
police forces to return into the areas presently controlled by the
Albanian guerrillas in order to uncover additional evidence. Since 13
November, Macedonian security forces have been conducting an exhumation
at a mass grave outside the ethnic Albanian village of Trebos. To date,
the police have unearthed the bodies of six Macedonians, from a total
of 21 civilians who have disappeared following UCK attacks.
Intelligence officer Nikola believes it was Mujahadeen fighters who
perpetrated the Trebos massacre "because of the manner in which the
bodies were cut up and scattered."
Nikola also suspects that Mujahadeen fanatics perpetrated a brutal
ambush against security forces last April. In this incident, eight
policemen were shot outside the village of Vejce, their bodies
viciously dismembered to provide the victors with grisly trophies. The
Macedonian authorities are not the only ones to affix the blame for the
Vejce ambush on the Mujahadeen.
During the summer offensive around Tetovo, Albanian guerrillas eagerly
admitted they had gained combat experience in previous conflicts.
Twenty-three-year old Commander "Jimmy" claimed he was a veteran of
Chechnya and Kosovo, while "Snake" Arifaq bragged of service in Bosnia
and displayed a scar he received during the fighting in Croatia. Both
of these Albanians
acknowledged the involvement of Arab/Afghan "volunteers" in training
members of the UCK. As for the Vejce incident, Commander Jimmy said
such an atrocity could "only have been committed by the Foreigners
[Mujahadeen serving in the
UCK] because Albanians do not cut up bodies."
Once the UCK insurrection began in March, the Macedonian government
hastily acquired a fleet of six Ukrainian helicopter gunships to
provide their troops with tactical air support. "Shortly after that,
our pilots reported being tracked by sophisticated [U.S.-made] Stinger
[anti-aircraft] missiles," said Nikola. "It is the information [of
Macedonian Intelligence] that the UCK received these Stingers from
their Mujahadeen connections in Afghanistan."
American advisors and covert military aid have also contributed to the
UCK’s combat effectiveness, but since 11 September the Macedonians have
noted a shift in U.S. foreign policy. "The CIA have been much more
receptive to our reports about the Al-Qaeda," said Nikola.
"Particularly after they
discovered that one of the suicide hijackers had been active in both
Kosovo and Macedonia."
Given their common goal of neutralising Albanian terrorists, Macedonian
police have been working closely with their Yugoslavian counterparts.
More importantly, as part of the U.S.-led global initiative to combat
terror, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has been reinstated to the
ranks of Interpol – after a ten-year banishment. As a result,
Intelligence Officers from the
Yugoslavian Army have been able to supply their international
colleagues with a wealth of information outlining Mujahadeen activity
in Bosnia and Kosovo. Yugoslav Intelligence believes that at least 50
of the 150 Mujahadeen that fought in Kosovo are still active members of
the UCK.
Even without this Yugoslav co-operation, Interpol was already tracking
the Al-Qaeda’s Balkan activities. On 23 October this year, Interpol
released a preliminary report outlining bin Laden’s personal links to
the Albanian Mafia. In this report, Interpol alleges that a senior
Al-Qaeda lieutenant had been the commander of an elite UCK unit in
Kosovo during the fighting in 1999.
While U.S. President Bill Clinton’s regime was the driving force to
garner NATO support for the UCK, numerous media reports clearly show
that the CIA were well aware of bin Laden’s Albanian links prior to
NATO’s commitment in Kosovo.
On 17 January 1999 the international press was filled with news of an
alleged massacre of 45 Albanian Kosovars in the village of Racak.
Clinton seized upon this particular incident (later disproved, by UN
pathologists, to have been an Albanian hoax) to proclaim that the West
could no longer overlook "Serbian atrocities." With Clinton’s
statement, NATO was
irrevocably launched on the path towards its confrontation with
Yugoslavia.
Although lost in the U.S. media hype, Greek media outlets that same day
were detailing the Taliban’s widespread entry into Albania at the
invitation of ex-President Sali Berisa and former head of Intelligence
Bashkim Gazidede.
According to The Tribune, an Athens daily newspaper, Albanian security
official Fatos Klozi confirmed that "bin Laden was one of those who had
organised and sent groups to fight in Kosovo. There were Egyptians,
Saudis, Algerians, Tunisians, Sudanese and Kuwaitis from different
organisations
among the [UCK] mercenaries."
Ten days later, on 27 January 1999, the Arab-language news service Al
Hayat reported that an Albanian commander in Kosovo, code-named
"Monia," was directly connected to Osama bin Laden. The Al Hayat piece
also proudly proclaimed that "at least 100 Muslim Mujahadeen" were
serving with Monia’s force in Kosovo.
The Washington Post reported in August 1998 that the CIA were not only
aware of bin Laden’s association with the Albanian regime, but that
U.S. operatives had been "prominent" in the arrest of four Al-Qaeda
agents in Tirana. At that time, U.S. State Department officials even
speculated that
the bombings of their embassies in Kenya and Tanzania might have been
bin Laden’s revenge for the Tirana arrests.
The Al-Qaeda suspects detained by the CIA in Albania had been operating
the Islamic Revival Foundation, "a charitable organisation that
official sources say provided a useful cover for the [suspects] efforts
on behalf of bin Laden," reported the Post.
In February 1998, the U.S. State Department had removed the UCK from
their list of terrorist organisations. However later that same year,
the CIA and their Albanian SHIK intelligence counterparts co-operated
to successfully shut down a Mujahadeen Jihad cell operating in
conjunction with the
Albanians inside Kosovo.
Some of the most revealing links surfaced in December 1998 when
Al-Qaeda agent Claude Sheik Abdel-Kader was arrested in Tirana for the
murder of his Albanian translator. During his trial, Abdel-Kader
confessed to being a senior commander in bin Laden’s network, and
claimed he had recruited a force of some 300 Mujahadeen to fight in
Kosovo. European media covering the trial reported Abdul-Kader’s
revelation that Osama bin Laden – although a wanted terrorist –
travelled freely to Tirana in 1994 and 1998 to meet with senior
Albanian officials. Abdel-Kader also confessed that when the Albanian
regime of Sali Berisa collapsed into anarchy in 1997, state armouries
and government offices were looted. Many of the 10,000 heavy weapons
and 100,000 passports that went missing conveniently fell into the
hands of the Al-Qaeda.
Osama bin Laden – stripped of his Saudi citizenship in 1994 – is
alleged to have retained the Bosnian passport he was issued in Vienna
in 1993. The granting of official travel documents to bin Laden was
first reported 24 September 1999 by Dani, a Bosnian Muslim weekly
newspaper. The rationale
behind bestowing citizenship on a wanted terrorist was that Bosnian
President Alija Izetbegovic had been thankful for the Mujahadeen’s
contribution in his quest for a Balkan "fundamentalist Islamic
Republic."
It was also reported by Dani that Al-Qaeda terrorist Mehrez Aodouni had
been arrested in Istanbul while carrying a Bosnian passport. Like bin
Laden, his citizenship had been granted "because he was a member of the
Bosnia-Herzegovina Army."
Canadian soldiers serving with the United Nations Protection Force
(UNPROFOR) were among the first to report the presence of Mujahadeen in
the ranks of the Bosnian Muslims as early as 1992.
The Asian Wall Street Journal reported that, in 1993, bin Laden had
appointed Al Zawahiri, the Al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, to direct all
his operations in the Balkans.
While no exact numbers exist, it is estimated that between 1500 and
3500 Arab volunteers participated in the Bosnian civil war. Their main
area of operation was in the region of Zenica, with most Mujahadeen
serving in the 7th Brigade of General Sakib Mahmuljin’s 3rd Corps,
nicknamed "the
Guerrillas." Identified by red and green "Rambo" bandannas emblazoned
with the crest "our road is Jihad," this unit earned a reputation for
criminal brutality.
On 27 June 1993, the Sunday Times reported that even Bosnian Muslim
officers had reservations about the Mujahadeen volunteers. Colonel
Stjepan Siber, then-Deputy Commander of the Bosnia-Herzegovina Army,
admitted to the Times that "It was a mistake to let [the Mujahadeen] in
here… They commit most of the atrocities and work against the interests
of the Muslim people. They have been killing, looting and stealing."
According to reports, it was the Mujahadeen who were serving with
General Nasir Oric in the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica who committed
some of the most barbaric atrocities of the war. Beheadings of Serbian
civilians were commonplace, and in some villages the Mujahadeen would
dynamite homes with
the inhabitants trapped inside.
No attempt was made to hide such atrocities. In fact, General Oric
would often address media at the site of the massacres. On one such
occasion, while standing in front of Mujahadeen brandishing human head
trophies, Oric pointed to a flaming ruin and proudly said to reporters,
"We blew those Serbs to the moon."
Alija Izetbegovic was also proud to display the fighting prowess of his
Mujahadeen volunteers. Following a successful attack against Serbian
positions around Vozuce on 10 September 1995, the Bosnian President
held a televised medal presentation parade. The Mujahadeen had provided
the
vanguard of the assault force, and were awarded 11 decorations for
valour, including the Golden Crescent, Bosnia’s highest honour.
Yugoslav Intelligence estimates that over 1500 Bosnian citizenships
were granted to Mujahadeen/Al-Qaeda fighters following the Dayton Peace
Accord in 1995. Most of those soldiers are believed to have settled in
the Zenica region.
According to Miroslav Lazanski, author of the new book Osama bin Laden
Against America, Al-Qaeda still maintain two operational bases in
Bosnia. One of these contains only the best fighters and was commanded
by an Algerian, Abu Al Mali.
Following the 11 September attacks, FBI and CIA agents uncovered
evidence that two of the suicide hijackers had originated from this
Bosnian camp. Abu Mali was subsequently arrested while travelling in
Istanbul on a Bosnian passport.
It is evident from recent events that the U.S. military is also well
aware of the continued Mujahadeen presence in the Balkans. General
Myers visited NATO troops stationed in Bosnia in late November to warn
them against a possible Al-Qaeda retaliation attack. In addition, on 4
December, the White
House added two Albanian terrorist groups operating in Macedonia and
Kosovo to their list of outlawed organisations.
President George Bush’s campaign against bin Laden’s terrorists would
appear to have come full circle to confront the Clinton
administration’s dubious Balkan legacy.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/aug2003/asyl-a08_prn.shtml
World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org
WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : Germany
Germany: Fewer asylum-seekers and more deportations
By Martin Kreickenbaum
8 August 2003
On July 13, the German Interior Ministry presented asylum statistics
for the first six months of 2003. According to these figures, only
26,452 people sought asylum in Germany in this period. This represents
a 27 percent decrease compared to the same period last year, and is 24
percent less than the second half of 2002.
The number of asylum-seekers also fell drastically last year in
comparison with 2001. Since the month-on-month trend is also down, the
number of asylum-seekers coming to Germany in 2003 looks set to fall to
its lowest level since 1985.
The percentage of those asylum-seekers who were recognised as suffering
political persecution and granted asylum remained at the markedly low
level of the previous year. Altogether, 48,045 asylum decisions were
taken by the Federal Office for the Recognition of Foreign Refugees.
However, in only approximately 2,000 cases were the applications for
asylum regarded as justified or the applicants granted limited
protection from deportation on political or humanitarian grounds. This
represents a recognition rate of just 4.2 percent.
In 2001, almost a quarter of those seeking refuge in Germany were at
least granted temporary protection. In the mid-1980s, with around the
same number of asylum applications as today, almost 30 percent of
applications were granted asylum.
This alarming development, which is celebrated as a success by the
German government, is a direct consequence of its policy of rejecting
refugees. The Social Democratic Party-Green Party coalition in Berlin
has intensified the inhumane policy of its conservative predecessors,
and in only five years has cut the number of asylum-seekers by around
nearly two thirds. It retained the conservatives’ “safe third country”
rule, the most restrictive in Europe, the concept of “safe countries of
origin,” the excluding of civil war refugees from the asylum process.
It also instigated the quartering of refugees near their homeland,
making it increasingly impossible for those needing protection to lodge
an asylum application in Germany.
If, despite these obstacles, asylum-seekers nevertheless manage to make
it to Germany, they face further deterrents. These include the legally
dubious rapid deportation proceedings at airports and the setting of
welfare support for asylum-seekers 30 percent below the standard rate,
while simultaneously prohibiting them from working.
The dramatic decrease in the numbers of asylum-seekers and those
granted asylum has nothing to do with an improved security situation
worldwide, and this is demonstrated by what is taking place in the main
countries of origin of most refugees. These include states like Turkey,
China and Iran, which are continually reprimanded (by the German
government, amongst others) for their offences against human rights and
the use of torture.
Although Turkey has since replaced Iraq as the country of origin for
the majority of those seeking asylum in Germany, nearly 12 percent of
asylum-seekers still come from Iraq, whose population is suffering from
the brutal occupation regime under American and British troops. The
situation facing the population has catastrophically worsened since the
beginning of the war. The US-British forces confront a guerrilla war
involving widespread popular resistance. The response of the occupying
powers has been to increasingly resort to arbitrary arrests. Amnesty
International has documented serious cases of human rights violations,
including the use of torture by the American and British occupiers.
It is worth noting that nearly 25 percent of refugees originate from
countries that have been dragged into war at the hands of NATO (or the
changing coalitions under US control). Aside from Iraq, these include
Serbia, Montenegro and Afghanistan. Official political rhetoric praises
these wars as efforts to liberate people from dictatorial regimes and
establish “democracy” and “liberty,” but the numbers of refugees
fleeing from these same countries paint another picture: one oppressive
regime is replaced by another. Moreover, the wars are accompanied by a
dramatic economic decline. In the resulting desolate social situation
minorities rapidly become scapegoats, the target of discrimination and
violence; the circumstances facing Roma peoples in Serbia and
Montenegro are just one example.
A German Foreign Ministry report last year noted: “The situation facing
minorities in the FRY [Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, now Serbia and
Montenegro] does not meet...international standards by a long chalk.”
However, the proportion of refugees from Serbia and Montenegro who are
granted asylum is just 0.1 percent. And although there are already
hundreds of thousands of internal refugees in the former Yugoslavia,
and more who are returning to a life of poverty and desperation, the
German government concluded an agreement with Yugoslavia in November
2002 whereby all refugees, bar a few exceptions, are forced to return.
Deportation policy continues
The result of Germany’s deportation policy was clearly shown in a June
23 report in the Frankfurter Rundschau. A Roma family, who had lived 12
years in Syke, in Lower Saxony, was taken at night by the police and
deported to Belgrade. There they live with thousands of other refugees
in misery in the illegal settlement of Deponia. Dominated by huts made
from cardboard and corrugated sheeting, there are neither proper roads
nor adequate water or electricity services. Since there is no work,
they scour the garbage containers coming from Belgrade for bottles,
bread and paper. The children are sent to beg on the streets of the
Serbian metropolis.
Green Party politician Claudia Roth, the German government’s human
rights spokesperson, visited Belgrade in order to gain a first-hand
picture of the situation confronting refugees deported there. She
maintains that a continuation of the deportation policy is inhumane and
cannot be justified politically. But these hypocritical words were
intended for the press corps accompanying her visit rather than for her
government coalition partners, since Berlin continues its policy of
deporting people, even into crisis areas.
The German federal and state interior ministers have encouraged the
authorities to carry out ever more arbitrary and illegal actions, in
order ensure deportations.
On June 26, the deportation of 64 refugees from Düsseldorf to Kosovo
failed. Members of minorities such as Roma, Ashkali or Egyptians can
only be deported after the UN Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK)
has examined each individual case. In addition, a detailed list of the
refugees being deported has to be submitted to UNMIK beforehand. This
is what was missing on June 26, as the German authorities clearly tried
to illegally deport members of minorities.
As the airplane neared Kosovo, UNMIK refused it landing permission. The
flight was swiftly rerouted to Podgorica in Montenegro, in order to
then take the deportees by bus to Kosovo. Since UNMIK also rejected
this approach, the refugees were finally flown back to Düsseldorf. They
had to endure nearly 10 hours of intense heat in an airplane hangar,
whose windows and doors were firmly locked, and were refused food the
entire time.
In the course of this incident, the Kosovo co-coordinator of the UNHCR,
Karsten Luethke, declared that the German government was continually
deporting refugees to Kosovo who did not originate from the province.
In June, a mother and her seven children were deported to Turkey. The
family’s door was battered down in the early morning hours and the
eight people shipped by airplane to Istanbul, without being able to
contact a lawyer or even to take some basic luggage.
The deportation was illegal not only because they were refused a legal
hearing. The mother and her children were deported to Turkey despite
being Lebanese Kurds, who had fled the civil war in Lebanon years ago.
The claim by the authorities that this was a Turkish family is purely
capricious and was a blatant excuse to accelerate the deportation of
unwanted refugees.
Moreover, in contravention of both German and international law, the
family was torn apart, since the father was excluded from the
deportation. German authorities then cynically declared that he could
seek to reunite the family by travelling to Turkey.
On July 15, in the course of a failed deportation of a Congolese man,
Raphael Botoba, it came to light that despite the escalating violence
in the Congo—and the participation of Germany in a military
intervention there—further refugees were being deported to the central
African state. According to parliamentary state secretary Fritz Rudolf,
the government is not considering a ban on deportations to the Congo at
this time.
According to the twisted logic of the German government, military
intervention by the imperialist powers leads automatically to an
improvement in the human rights situation. This argument has been used
successively in the former Yugoslavia, in Afghanistan and in Iraq,
where following military interventions the proportion of refugees
granted asylum sank in each case as forced deportations increased. It
will not be any different in the Congo.
The government does not even attempt to hide the duplicity of its own
arguments. While it justifies its participation in a military
intervention with reference to the increasing violence in the Congo,
deportations are pushed through mercilessly, citing the relatively safe
situation in the capital. The Congolese churches and international
human rights organisations point out that “safe survival is hardly
possible” for those returning.
Berlin’s ever more ruthless deportation policy is not only directed
against refugees in Germany. The government is setting a clear sign of
what can be expected by potential refuges should they ever get to
Germany. The drastic fall in the numbers of those granted asylum
clearly shows that refugees should no longer expect protection from
persecution should they make it to German soil. Instead, they face a
life under miserable social conditions, with strongly curtailed
democratic rights, and under constant fear of deportation to a country
where even more intolerable conditions predominate.
Copyright 1998-2003
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved
World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org
WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : Germany
Germany: Fewer asylum-seekers and more deportations
By Martin Kreickenbaum
8 August 2003
On July 13, the German Interior Ministry presented asylum statistics
for the first six months of 2003. According to these figures, only
26,452 people sought asylum in Germany in this period. This represents
a 27 percent decrease compared to the same period last year, and is 24
percent less than the second half of 2002.
The number of asylum-seekers also fell drastically last year in
comparison with 2001. Since the month-on-month trend is also down, the
number of asylum-seekers coming to Germany in 2003 looks set to fall to
its lowest level since 1985.
The percentage of those asylum-seekers who were recognised as suffering
political persecution and granted asylum remained at the markedly low
level of the previous year. Altogether, 48,045 asylum decisions were
taken by the Federal Office for the Recognition of Foreign Refugees.
However, in only approximately 2,000 cases were the applications for
asylum regarded as justified or the applicants granted limited
protection from deportation on political or humanitarian grounds. This
represents a recognition rate of just 4.2 percent.
In 2001, almost a quarter of those seeking refuge in Germany were at
least granted temporary protection. In the mid-1980s, with around the
same number of asylum applications as today, almost 30 percent of
applications were granted asylum.
This alarming development, which is celebrated as a success by the
German government, is a direct consequence of its policy of rejecting
refugees. The Social Democratic Party-Green Party coalition in Berlin
has intensified the inhumane policy of its conservative predecessors,
and in only five years has cut the number of asylum-seekers by around
nearly two thirds. It retained the conservatives’ “safe third country”
rule, the most restrictive in Europe, the concept of “safe countries of
origin,” the excluding of civil war refugees from the asylum process.
It also instigated the quartering of refugees near their homeland,
making it increasingly impossible for those needing protection to lodge
an asylum application in Germany.
If, despite these obstacles, asylum-seekers nevertheless manage to make
it to Germany, they face further deterrents. These include the legally
dubious rapid deportation proceedings at airports and the setting of
welfare support for asylum-seekers 30 percent below the standard rate,
while simultaneously prohibiting them from working.
The dramatic decrease in the numbers of asylum-seekers and those
granted asylum has nothing to do with an improved security situation
worldwide, and this is demonstrated by what is taking place in the main
countries of origin of most refugees. These include states like Turkey,
China and Iran, which are continually reprimanded (by the German
government, amongst others) for their offences against human rights and
the use of torture.
Although Turkey has since replaced Iraq as the country of origin for
the majority of those seeking asylum in Germany, nearly 12 percent of
asylum-seekers still come from Iraq, whose population is suffering from
the brutal occupation regime under American and British troops. The
situation facing the population has catastrophically worsened since the
beginning of the war. The US-British forces confront a guerrilla war
involving widespread popular resistance. The response of the occupying
powers has been to increasingly resort to arbitrary arrests. Amnesty
International has documented serious cases of human rights violations,
including the use of torture by the American and British occupiers.
It is worth noting that nearly 25 percent of refugees originate from
countries that have been dragged into war at the hands of NATO (or the
changing coalitions under US control). Aside from Iraq, these include
Serbia, Montenegro and Afghanistan. Official political rhetoric praises
these wars as efforts to liberate people from dictatorial regimes and
establish “democracy” and “liberty,” but the numbers of refugees
fleeing from these same countries paint another picture: one oppressive
regime is replaced by another. Moreover, the wars are accompanied by a
dramatic economic decline. In the resulting desolate social situation
minorities rapidly become scapegoats, the target of discrimination and
violence; the circumstances facing Roma peoples in Serbia and
Montenegro are just one example.
A German Foreign Ministry report last year noted: “The situation facing
minorities in the FRY [Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, now Serbia and
Montenegro] does not meet...international standards by a long chalk.”
However, the proportion of refugees from Serbia and Montenegro who are
granted asylum is just 0.1 percent. And although there are already
hundreds of thousands of internal refugees in the former Yugoslavia,
and more who are returning to a life of poverty and desperation, the
German government concluded an agreement with Yugoslavia in November
2002 whereby all refugees, bar a few exceptions, are forced to return.
Deportation policy continues
The result of Germany’s deportation policy was clearly shown in a June
23 report in the Frankfurter Rundschau. A Roma family, who had lived 12
years in Syke, in Lower Saxony, was taken at night by the police and
deported to Belgrade. There they live with thousands of other refugees
in misery in the illegal settlement of Deponia. Dominated by huts made
from cardboard and corrugated sheeting, there are neither proper roads
nor adequate water or electricity services. Since there is no work,
they scour the garbage containers coming from Belgrade for bottles,
bread and paper. The children are sent to beg on the streets of the
Serbian metropolis.
Green Party politician Claudia Roth, the German government’s human
rights spokesperson, visited Belgrade in order to gain a first-hand
picture of the situation confronting refugees deported there. She
maintains that a continuation of the deportation policy is inhumane and
cannot be justified politically. But these hypocritical words were
intended for the press corps accompanying her visit rather than for her
government coalition partners, since Berlin continues its policy of
deporting people, even into crisis areas.
The German federal and state interior ministers have encouraged the
authorities to carry out ever more arbitrary and illegal actions, in
order ensure deportations.
On June 26, the deportation of 64 refugees from Düsseldorf to Kosovo
failed. Members of minorities such as Roma, Ashkali or Egyptians can
only be deported after the UN Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK)
has examined each individual case. In addition, a detailed list of the
refugees being deported has to be submitted to UNMIK beforehand. This
is what was missing on June 26, as the German authorities clearly tried
to illegally deport members of minorities.
As the airplane neared Kosovo, UNMIK refused it landing permission. The
flight was swiftly rerouted to Podgorica in Montenegro, in order to
then take the deportees by bus to Kosovo. Since UNMIK also rejected
this approach, the refugees were finally flown back to Düsseldorf. They
had to endure nearly 10 hours of intense heat in an airplane hangar,
whose windows and doors were firmly locked, and were refused food the
entire time.
In the course of this incident, the Kosovo co-coordinator of the UNHCR,
Karsten Luethke, declared that the German government was continually
deporting refugees to Kosovo who did not originate from the province.
In June, a mother and her seven children were deported to Turkey. The
family’s door was battered down in the early morning hours and the
eight people shipped by airplane to Istanbul, without being able to
contact a lawyer or even to take some basic luggage.
The deportation was illegal not only because they were refused a legal
hearing. The mother and her children were deported to Turkey despite
being Lebanese Kurds, who had fled the civil war in Lebanon years ago.
The claim by the authorities that this was a Turkish family is purely
capricious and was a blatant excuse to accelerate the deportation of
unwanted refugees.
Moreover, in contravention of both German and international law, the
family was torn apart, since the father was excluded from the
deportation. German authorities then cynically declared that he could
seek to reunite the family by travelling to Turkey.
On July 15, in the course of a failed deportation of a Congolese man,
Raphael Botoba, it came to light that despite the escalating violence
in the Congo—and the participation of Germany in a military
intervention there—further refugees were being deported to the central
African state. According to parliamentary state secretary Fritz Rudolf,
the government is not considering a ban on deportations to the Congo at
this time.
According to the twisted logic of the German government, military
intervention by the imperialist powers leads automatically to an
improvement in the human rights situation. This argument has been used
successively in the former Yugoslavia, in Afghanistan and in Iraq,
where following military interventions the proportion of refugees
granted asylum sank in each case as forced deportations increased. It
will not be any different in the Congo.
The government does not even attempt to hide the duplicity of its own
arguments. While it justifies its participation in a military
intervention with reference to the increasing violence in the Congo,
deportations are pushed through mercilessly, citing the relatively safe
situation in the capital. The Congolese churches and international
human rights organisations point out that “safe survival is hardly
possible” for those returning.
Berlin’s ever more ruthless deportation policy is not only directed
against refugees in Germany. The government is setting a clear sign of
what can be expected by potential refuges should they ever get to
Germany. The drastic fall in the numbers of those granted asylum
clearly shows that refugees should no longer expect protection from
persecution should they make it to German soil. Instead, they face a
life under miserable social conditions, with strongly curtailed
democratic rights, and under constant fear of deportation to a country
where even more intolerable conditions predominate.
Copyright 1998-2003
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved
Convegno CNJ 16/11/2002
3: Kapuralin
[ Ovaj Referat Kapularin Vladimira
(SRP - Socijalisticka Radnicka Partija Hrvatske -, Pula):
"Socijalna i Ekonomska Situacija u Bivsim
Jugoslovenskim Republikama - slucaj HRVATSKE"
moze se procitati i na srpskohrvatskom:
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/2376 ]
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/files/CONVEGNOTRIESTE/
trascrizioni.html
---
Trieste / Trst, 16 novembre 2002, Convegno:
"...PASSANDO SEMPRE PER LA JUGOSLAVIA..."
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/files/CONVEGNOTRIESTE/
kapuralin.html
INTERVENTO DI VLADIMIR KAPURALIN
(Partito Socialista Operaio - SRP -, Pola)
La situazione socio-economica nella ex-Jugoslavia:
il caso della Croazia
La Jugoslavia, formatasi durante la lotta contro il nazismo negli anni
successivi alla fine della II Guerra Mondiale, ha saputo ricostruire
l'intero Paese e la sua economia, distrutta in guerra, grazie
all'applicazione dell'intera popolazione.
Secondo le analisi degli esperti stranieri, per un lungo periodo essa
era in testa ai paesi con il piu' alto tasso di sviluppo.
I cantieri navali erano al terzo posto nella classifica mondiale e le
imprese edili e di ingegneria ottenevano appalti in tutto il mondo.
Il Paese prosperava anche nella scienza e nella cultura, e
l'autogestione, accompagnata dalla quasi assenza di disoccupazione,
con allo stesso tempo una grande sicurezza sul piano sociale,
permetteva un'esistenza dignitosa alla
popolazione.
A tutto questo contribuiva la politica del non-allineamento e della
sovranità ed indipendenza, anche grazie ad un esercito forte e ben
equipaggiato che garantiva ai cittadini sicurezza, libertà ed
indipendenza dai fattori esterni. Tutto questo con un debito estero di
18 miliardi di dollari, ovvero poco più di 800 dollari pro-capite.
Anche se non esisteva il sistema pluripartitico, e solo il 10% della
popolazione faceva parte del partito al potere, la maggior parte della
popolazione era leale al paese. La parte dei cittadini che voleva
ottenere di piu' era emigrata per ragioni
economiche, senza rompere i legami con la patria. C'e' da dire che era
emigrata anche quella parte di popolazione che faceva parte dei
perdenti della seconda Guerra Mondiale.
A loro si sono affiancati all'estero anche quelli che si consideravano
nemici del socialismo autogestito, e insieme avevano pianificato e
svolto azioni terroristiche contro la Jugoslavia, spesso ricevendo un
aiuto logistico dai Paesi che li ospitavano.
Alla fine degli anni 80 e 90 iniziano i processi che cambiano
radicalmente la situazione politica. Dopo il crollo del muro di
Berlino, i centri del potere capitalista rappresentati dalla Banca
Mondiale, dal Fondo Monetario Internazionale e dall'Organizzazione
Mondiale per il Commercio, guidati dai
sette Paesi piu' sviluppati del mondo, con l'aiuto logistico degli USA
e della NATO iniziano a realizzare il progetto lungamente preparato:
la distruzione dei regimi socialisti dell'Europa Orientale.
Su questa loro strada si e' trovata anche la Jugoslavia.
Nel processo - diretto dall'estero ed effettuato dalle forze interne -
si arriva alla secessione della Slovenia e della Croazia, seguite per
effetto domino dalla Bosnia e dalla Macedonia. Bisogna sottolineare
pero' che i centri di potere non avevano come scopo principale la
distruzione della Jugoslavia, bensi' quella del suo regime socialista
e autogestito - cosa che era impossibile realizzare senza
distruggere il Paese.
Questa battaglia era facilitata dal fatto che le destre nazionaliste
riuscirono a convincere la popolazione del fatto che con il capitalismo
non avrebbero perso nessuno dei diritti acquisiti, bensi' ne avrebbero
guadagnati di nuovi.
In senso economico, la distruzione della Jugoslavia significava la fine
dell'esistenza del mercato comune che per decenni aveva stabilito e
regolato i percorsi delle merci, accompagnato dalla libera circolazione
degli uomini e delle idee.
Per la Croazia questo ha significato la perdita improvvisa di oltre il
50% dei suoi beni, che prima della secessione venivano scambiati sul
mercato ex-jugoslavo, il quale non e' stato sostituito da alcun altro
mercato.
Il conflitto armato, in seguito alla secessione, ha avuto come
conseguenza la distruzione materiale delle infrastrutture
dell'economia e l'interruzione del flusso turistico dall'interno e
dall'estero, il che ha portato alla sparizione di questo ramo vitale
dell'economia.
Cosi' si e' creata la prima ondata di disoccupazione e l'abbassamento
dello standard di vita. La seguente ondata e' consistita
nell'interruzione dell'economia socialista e nell'introduzione del
capitalismo nella sua forma peggiore: l'accumulazione primordiale del
capitale.
Le imprese esangui non potevano competere di pari passo con i soggetti
capitalistici nella corsa al mercato. I neo-proprietari, diventati tali
per "meriti" politici, non avevano ne' interesse ne' volonta' e nemmeno
conoscenze per sviluppare la produzione; si limitavano a sfruttare la
materia prima.
Il passo successivo consisteva nella svendita anarchica, agli
stranieri, di tutto quanto aveva un valore, e questo come conseguenza
ha avuto nuove perdite di posti di lavoro e abbassamento dello standard
medio; anche perche' agli investitori stranieri interessava solamente
il mercato ed i beni, non lo sviluppo.
Cosi' [in Croazia] il 94% del potenziale finanziario e' diventato
proprieta' delle banche estere. E' rimasta soltanto la Banca Nazionale
che e' un istituto di emissione monetaria. Sono state vendute le
telecomunicazioni, gran parte delle case giornalistiche, gli hotels e
gli impianti turistici, molte fabbriche.
Da vendere ci sono rimaste ancora l'industria farmaceutica, quella
energetica, gli istitutti di assicurazione ed il latifondo agricolo.
Svendendo ogni giorno ogni potenziale di valore - i cosiddetti
"gioielli di famiglia" - lo Stato troppo costoso e spendaccione cerca
di ottenere i finanziamenti per mantenersi: pero' questo si e' mostrato
insufficiente.
Parallelamente e' cresciuto anche il debito estero, che e' arrivato
alla cifra di 14 miliardi di dollari, vale a dire 3.000 dollari
pro-capite, ossia il 60% del PIL - e per pagare gli interessi serve un
miliardo di dollari l'anno.
Vulnerabile com'e', la Croazia e' diventata la destinazione prediletta
per disfarsi degli equipaggiamenti industriali e bellici obsoleti e
nocivi, e poi anche il poligono per l'addestramento gratuito degli
eserciti.
Negli ultimi 12 anni la Croazia e' retrocessa in tutti i campi; si
stima che abbia perduto 700.000 posti di lavoro; la disoccupazione e'
di 400.000 unita' (la piu' grande in Europa) [in effetti essa e' oggi
superata perlomeno dalla Serbia di Djindjic, che sfiora un milione di
disoccupati; ndCRJ] ovvero
il 20% della popolazione attiva.
A titolo comparativo, la Germania un anno prima dell'ascesa di Hitler
al potere aveva il 20% di disoccupati. E' caratteristico per il paese
che una parte degli operai non viene pagata per mesi o addirittura per
un anno intero. Questa categoria in un certo momento era arrivata alla
cifra di 150.000 persone.
Si stima che durante il conflitto e dopo di quello sono state distrutte
o incendiate 50.000 case. Interi paesi sono scomparsi dalla faccia
della terra. Sono stati cacciati via 250.000 serbi. Intere province
sono rimaste deserte.
Si stima che circa 100.000 giovani altamente scolarizzati siano
emigrati, soprattutto per sfuggire a una guerra che non volevano e
all'assenza di una prospettiva di vita. E' irreale aspettarsi che
questi giovani all'apice della forza produttiva ritornino.
Secondo i dati del 1998, ogni cittadino croato disponeva di 25 kune al
giorno da usare per i consumi, il che corrispondeva a meno di 4 dollari.
E' cosa nota che si considera al di sotto della soglia di poverta' chi
disponga di meno di 5 dollari al giorno.
Le condizioni di vita in Istria e sul Litorale, dunque in regioni
relativamente vicine all'Italia, hanno determinato la nascita di una
specifica categoria sociale: le donne, di varia eta', di diverse
professioni, spesso anche molto istruite, molte con una salute
precaria, che hanno adottato una soluzione sui generis per la
sopravvivenza propria e della propria famiglia, ossia il cercare lavoro
oltre frontiera [in Italia], assistendo gente anziana e/o facendo i
lavori piu' umili. Si ritiene che siano circa
10.000 le donne di tale categoria. Vogliamo ricordare il fatto che
anche le nostre madri si guadagnavano da vivere in questo modo tra le
due guerre mondiali, nelle regioni occupate dagli italiani; la
differenza e' che perlomeno rimanevano a lavorare a casa, mentre quelle
odierne devono separarsi dalle loro famiglie. Cio' ha lasciato segni
inequivocabili nella sfera emotiva e vitale di ogni individuo. In
queste persone si
alternano sentimenti di delusione, apatia, rabbia, impotenza,
riluttanza, rassegnazione. Sono ovvie le conseguenze sullo stato di
salute di queste persone. Non ultima l'abbreviarsi della longevita' dei
cittadini croati negli ultimi dodici anni.
La Croazia e' oggi deindustrializzata. Mancano gli investimenti,
eccetto quelli per la ricostruzione delle strade e delle chiese.
La sanita' e' ridotta ai minimi termini ed e' accessibile solo a chi
puo' permettersela pagando. Anche l'istruzione e' scesa di livello. Uno
dei problemi principali consiste nel revisionismo storico: la storia
viene adattata alle esigenze nazionaliste, il che avra' conseguenze a
lungo termine nella formazione delle nuove generazioni. Un esempio e'
dato dall'accettazione di una netta iconografia ustascia. Quello che ci
deve preoccupare particolarmente e' l'aumentato uso di stupefacenti tra
i giovani in risposta alla mancanza di prospettive per il futuro. Ne
consegue anche una corruzione dilagante tra le istituzioni in vario
modo coinvolte nello spaccio di narcotici.
La Chiesa e' aggressivamente presente in ogni ambito della societa', a
cominciare dagli asili nido.
Il sistema giuridico e' paralizzato dall'onnipresenza di persone
corrotte e dai bisogni del nazionalismo imperante. In particolar modo
cio' e' evidente nel modo in cui vengono trattati i crimini compiuti
dalla parte croata durante e dopo gli scontri bellici.
Per la Croazia e' rischioso il gioco attuato dal suo governo nei
confronti della comunita' internazionale, in particolare con il
Tribunale dell'Aia. La Croazia cerca di sottrarsi arrogantemente alla
collaborazione con la Comunita' Internazionale, ai tentativi di questa
di processare i crimini
commessi. In questo modo essa si accosta alla destra piu' retrograda,
nazionalista, portando il Paese al limite delle sanzioni e
dell'isolamento internazionale.
La domanda che ci si pone e': quali sono le possibili soluzioni di
questa situazione quasi irrisolvibile?
Se partiamo da una constatazione reale, e cioe' dal fatto che
l'economia croata non dispone in questo momento di prodotti che possano
competere sul sofisticato mercato occidentale, mentre potrebbe offrirne
a quello dell'Est, se ne ricava che essa dovrebbe, senza sentirsene
frustrata, accettare questa possibilita'. Questo significa che dovrebbe
stabilire relazioni diverse d'integrazione, s'intende con le
ex-repubbliche jugoslave , nonche' relazioni piu' ampie con quei paesi
dove essa era un tempo presente, il che, secondo le valutazione del
dott. Branko Horvat, comprenderebbe un territorio di 150 milioni di
consumatori. In ambito economico, tanto interno quanto esterno, questo
territorio si denomina "Balkanska unija" (Unione balcanica).
Per far cio' dobbiamo immediatamente fermare l'ulteriore svendita del
patrimonio nazionale che porta alla distruzione dell'economia del
Paese. Laddove e' possibile bisogna restituire all'autogestione da
parte degli operai cio' che e' stato loro sottratto e creare le
condizioni per il rinnovamento della proprieta' collettiva e
dell'autogestione. Bisogna lavorare sulla ricostruzione usando tutte le
nostre risorse intellettive e
utilizzando appieno il potenziale umano di cui disponiamo.
Questo processo non e' facile ma ogni minuto perso lo rende solo piu'
difficile. In mancanza di capitali si potrebbe iniziare da un utilizzo
migliore delle risorse agricole di cui gia' disponiamo. I risultati si
raccolgono gia' dopo un solo anno, e lo stesso vale per il turismo,
naturalmente nel limite di quanto non e' stato ancora svenduto.
3: Kapuralin
[ Ovaj Referat Kapularin Vladimira
(SRP - Socijalisticka Radnicka Partija Hrvatske -, Pula):
"Socijalna i Ekonomska Situacija u Bivsim
Jugoslovenskim Republikama - slucaj HRVATSKE"
moze se procitati i na srpskohrvatskom:
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/2376 ]
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/files/CONVEGNOTRIESTE/
trascrizioni.html
---
Trieste / Trst, 16 novembre 2002, Convegno:
"...PASSANDO SEMPRE PER LA JUGOSLAVIA..."
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/files/CONVEGNOTRIESTE/
kapuralin.html
INTERVENTO DI VLADIMIR KAPURALIN
(Partito Socialista Operaio - SRP -, Pola)
La situazione socio-economica nella ex-Jugoslavia:
il caso della Croazia
La Jugoslavia, formatasi durante la lotta contro il nazismo negli anni
successivi alla fine della II Guerra Mondiale, ha saputo ricostruire
l'intero Paese e la sua economia, distrutta in guerra, grazie
all'applicazione dell'intera popolazione.
Secondo le analisi degli esperti stranieri, per un lungo periodo essa
era in testa ai paesi con il piu' alto tasso di sviluppo.
I cantieri navali erano al terzo posto nella classifica mondiale e le
imprese edili e di ingegneria ottenevano appalti in tutto il mondo.
Il Paese prosperava anche nella scienza e nella cultura, e
l'autogestione, accompagnata dalla quasi assenza di disoccupazione,
con allo stesso tempo una grande sicurezza sul piano sociale,
permetteva un'esistenza dignitosa alla
popolazione.
A tutto questo contribuiva la politica del non-allineamento e della
sovranità ed indipendenza, anche grazie ad un esercito forte e ben
equipaggiato che garantiva ai cittadini sicurezza, libertà ed
indipendenza dai fattori esterni. Tutto questo con un debito estero di
18 miliardi di dollari, ovvero poco più di 800 dollari pro-capite.
Anche se non esisteva il sistema pluripartitico, e solo il 10% della
popolazione faceva parte del partito al potere, la maggior parte della
popolazione era leale al paese. La parte dei cittadini che voleva
ottenere di piu' era emigrata per ragioni
economiche, senza rompere i legami con la patria. C'e' da dire che era
emigrata anche quella parte di popolazione che faceva parte dei
perdenti della seconda Guerra Mondiale.
A loro si sono affiancati all'estero anche quelli che si consideravano
nemici del socialismo autogestito, e insieme avevano pianificato e
svolto azioni terroristiche contro la Jugoslavia, spesso ricevendo un
aiuto logistico dai Paesi che li ospitavano.
Alla fine degli anni 80 e 90 iniziano i processi che cambiano
radicalmente la situazione politica. Dopo il crollo del muro di
Berlino, i centri del potere capitalista rappresentati dalla Banca
Mondiale, dal Fondo Monetario Internazionale e dall'Organizzazione
Mondiale per il Commercio, guidati dai
sette Paesi piu' sviluppati del mondo, con l'aiuto logistico degli USA
e della NATO iniziano a realizzare il progetto lungamente preparato:
la distruzione dei regimi socialisti dell'Europa Orientale.
Su questa loro strada si e' trovata anche la Jugoslavia.
Nel processo - diretto dall'estero ed effettuato dalle forze interne -
si arriva alla secessione della Slovenia e della Croazia, seguite per
effetto domino dalla Bosnia e dalla Macedonia. Bisogna sottolineare
pero' che i centri di potere non avevano come scopo principale la
distruzione della Jugoslavia, bensi' quella del suo regime socialista
e autogestito - cosa che era impossibile realizzare senza
distruggere il Paese.
Questa battaglia era facilitata dal fatto che le destre nazionaliste
riuscirono a convincere la popolazione del fatto che con il capitalismo
non avrebbero perso nessuno dei diritti acquisiti, bensi' ne avrebbero
guadagnati di nuovi.
In senso economico, la distruzione della Jugoslavia significava la fine
dell'esistenza del mercato comune che per decenni aveva stabilito e
regolato i percorsi delle merci, accompagnato dalla libera circolazione
degli uomini e delle idee.
Per la Croazia questo ha significato la perdita improvvisa di oltre il
50% dei suoi beni, che prima della secessione venivano scambiati sul
mercato ex-jugoslavo, il quale non e' stato sostituito da alcun altro
mercato.
Il conflitto armato, in seguito alla secessione, ha avuto come
conseguenza la distruzione materiale delle infrastrutture
dell'economia e l'interruzione del flusso turistico dall'interno e
dall'estero, il che ha portato alla sparizione di questo ramo vitale
dell'economia.
Cosi' si e' creata la prima ondata di disoccupazione e l'abbassamento
dello standard di vita. La seguente ondata e' consistita
nell'interruzione dell'economia socialista e nell'introduzione del
capitalismo nella sua forma peggiore: l'accumulazione primordiale del
capitale.
Le imprese esangui non potevano competere di pari passo con i soggetti
capitalistici nella corsa al mercato. I neo-proprietari, diventati tali
per "meriti" politici, non avevano ne' interesse ne' volonta' e nemmeno
conoscenze per sviluppare la produzione; si limitavano a sfruttare la
materia prima.
Il passo successivo consisteva nella svendita anarchica, agli
stranieri, di tutto quanto aveva un valore, e questo come conseguenza
ha avuto nuove perdite di posti di lavoro e abbassamento dello standard
medio; anche perche' agli investitori stranieri interessava solamente
il mercato ed i beni, non lo sviluppo.
Cosi' [in Croazia] il 94% del potenziale finanziario e' diventato
proprieta' delle banche estere. E' rimasta soltanto la Banca Nazionale
che e' un istituto di emissione monetaria. Sono state vendute le
telecomunicazioni, gran parte delle case giornalistiche, gli hotels e
gli impianti turistici, molte fabbriche.
Da vendere ci sono rimaste ancora l'industria farmaceutica, quella
energetica, gli istitutti di assicurazione ed il latifondo agricolo.
Svendendo ogni giorno ogni potenziale di valore - i cosiddetti
"gioielli di famiglia" - lo Stato troppo costoso e spendaccione cerca
di ottenere i finanziamenti per mantenersi: pero' questo si e' mostrato
insufficiente.
Parallelamente e' cresciuto anche il debito estero, che e' arrivato
alla cifra di 14 miliardi di dollari, vale a dire 3.000 dollari
pro-capite, ossia il 60% del PIL - e per pagare gli interessi serve un
miliardo di dollari l'anno.
Vulnerabile com'e', la Croazia e' diventata la destinazione prediletta
per disfarsi degli equipaggiamenti industriali e bellici obsoleti e
nocivi, e poi anche il poligono per l'addestramento gratuito degli
eserciti.
Negli ultimi 12 anni la Croazia e' retrocessa in tutti i campi; si
stima che abbia perduto 700.000 posti di lavoro; la disoccupazione e'
di 400.000 unita' (la piu' grande in Europa) [in effetti essa e' oggi
superata perlomeno dalla Serbia di Djindjic, che sfiora un milione di
disoccupati; ndCRJ] ovvero
il 20% della popolazione attiva.
A titolo comparativo, la Germania un anno prima dell'ascesa di Hitler
al potere aveva il 20% di disoccupati. E' caratteristico per il paese
che una parte degli operai non viene pagata per mesi o addirittura per
un anno intero. Questa categoria in un certo momento era arrivata alla
cifra di 150.000 persone.
Si stima che durante il conflitto e dopo di quello sono state distrutte
o incendiate 50.000 case. Interi paesi sono scomparsi dalla faccia
della terra. Sono stati cacciati via 250.000 serbi. Intere province
sono rimaste deserte.
Si stima che circa 100.000 giovani altamente scolarizzati siano
emigrati, soprattutto per sfuggire a una guerra che non volevano e
all'assenza di una prospettiva di vita. E' irreale aspettarsi che
questi giovani all'apice della forza produttiva ritornino.
Secondo i dati del 1998, ogni cittadino croato disponeva di 25 kune al
giorno da usare per i consumi, il che corrispondeva a meno di 4 dollari.
E' cosa nota che si considera al di sotto della soglia di poverta' chi
disponga di meno di 5 dollari al giorno.
Le condizioni di vita in Istria e sul Litorale, dunque in regioni
relativamente vicine all'Italia, hanno determinato la nascita di una
specifica categoria sociale: le donne, di varia eta', di diverse
professioni, spesso anche molto istruite, molte con una salute
precaria, che hanno adottato una soluzione sui generis per la
sopravvivenza propria e della propria famiglia, ossia il cercare lavoro
oltre frontiera [in Italia], assistendo gente anziana e/o facendo i
lavori piu' umili. Si ritiene che siano circa
10.000 le donne di tale categoria. Vogliamo ricordare il fatto che
anche le nostre madri si guadagnavano da vivere in questo modo tra le
due guerre mondiali, nelle regioni occupate dagli italiani; la
differenza e' che perlomeno rimanevano a lavorare a casa, mentre quelle
odierne devono separarsi dalle loro famiglie. Cio' ha lasciato segni
inequivocabili nella sfera emotiva e vitale di ogni individuo. In
queste persone si
alternano sentimenti di delusione, apatia, rabbia, impotenza,
riluttanza, rassegnazione. Sono ovvie le conseguenze sullo stato di
salute di queste persone. Non ultima l'abbreviarsi della longevita' dei
cittadini croati negli ultimi dodici anni.
La Croazia e' oggi deindustrializzata. Mancano gli investimenti,
eccetto quelli per la ricostruzione delle strade e delle chiese.
La sanita' e' ridotta ai minimi termini ed e' accessibile solo a chi
puo' permettersela pagando. Anche l'istruzione e' scesa di livello. Uno
dei problemi principali consiste nel revisionismo storico: la storia
viene adattata alle esigenze nazionaliste, il che avra' conseguenze a
lungo termine nella formazione delle nuove generazioni. Un esempio e'
dato dall'accettazione di una netta iconografia ustascia. Quello che ci
deve preoccupare particolarmente e' l'aumentato uso di stupefacenti tra
i giovani in risposta alla mancanza di prospettive per il futuro. Ne
consegue anche una corruzione dilagante tra le istituzioni in vario
modo coinvolte nello spaccio di narcotici.
La Chiesa e' aggressivamente presente in ogni ambito della societa', a
cominciare dagli asili nido.
Il sistema giuridico e' paralizzato dall'onnipresenza di persone
corrotte e dai bisogni del nazionalismo imperante. In particolar modo
cio' e' evidente nel modo in cui vengono trattati i crimini compiuti
dalla parte croata durante e dopo gli scontri bellici.
Per la Croazia e' rischioso il gioco attuato dal suo governo nei
confronti della comunita' internazionale, in particolare con il
Tribunale dell'Aia. La Croazia cerca di sottrarsi arrogantemente alla
collaborazione con la Comunita' Internazionale, ai tentativi di questa
di processare i crimini
commessi. In questo modo essa si accosta alla destra piu' retrograda,
nazionalista, portando il Paese al limite delle sanzioni e
dell'isolamento internazionale.
La domanda che ci si pone e': quali sono le possibili soluzioni di
questa situazione quasi irrisolvibile?
Se partiamo da una constatazione reale, e cioe' dal fatto che
l'economia croata non dispone in questo momento di prodotti che possano
competere sul sofisticato mercato occidentale, mentre potrebbe offrirne
a quello dell'Est, se ne ricava che essa dovrebbe, senza sentirsene
frustrata, accettare questa possibilita'. Questo significa che dovrebbe
stabilire relazioni diverse d'integrazione, s'intende con le
ex-repubbliche jugoslave , nonche' relazioni piu' ampie con quei paesi
dove essa era un tempo presente, il che, secondo le valutazione del
dott. Branko Horvat, comprenderebbe un territorio di 150 milioni di
consumatori. In ambito economico, tanto interno quanto esterno, questo
territorio si denomina "Balkanska unija" (Unione balcanica).
Per far cio' dobbiamo immediatamente fermare l'ulteriore svendita del
patrimonio nazionale che porta alla distruzione dell'economia del
Paese. Laddove e' possibile bisogna restituire all'autogestione da
parte degli operai cio' che e' stato loro sottratto e creare le
condizioni per il rinnovamento della proprieta' collettiva e
dell'autogestione. Bisogna lavorare sulla ricostruzione usando tutte le
nostre risorse intellettive e
utilizzando appieno il potenziale umano di cui disponiamo.
Questo processo non e' facile ma ogni minuto perso lo rende solo piu'
difficile. In mancanza di capitali si potrebbe iniziare da un utilizzo
migliore delle risorse agricole di cui gia' disponiamo. I risultati si
raccolgono gia' dopo un solo anno, e lo stesso vale per il turismo,
naturalmente nel limite di quanto non e' stato ancora svenduto.
Il terrorismo "buono" (english / italiano)
1: MUJAHEDDIN A ZENICA E DINTORNI
A. 7th Bosnian Muslim Brigade, based in Zenica - the international
Islamic mercenary force known as the mujahedeen
+ interesting LINKS
B. Bosnia Seen as Hospitable Base and Sanctuary for Terrorists (Los
Angeles Times)
NOTA:
Sul quotidiano Vecernji List di Zagabria del 3/8/2003 e' scritto che i
due attentatori che con il Boeing si sono schiantati contro il
Pentagono l'11 Settembre, nel 1995 combattevano in Bosnia-Erzegovina. I
loro nomi sarebbero Khalid Al-Mihdhar e Nawaf Al-Hasmir.
Non sappiamo se questi due personaggi si siano veramente schiantati sul
Pentagono. Quello che invece e' assodato e' che militanti islamisti di
svariata provenienza hanno combattuto in Bosnia, al fianco di
Izetbegovic, Clinton ed Adriano Sofri, come e' ben spiegato nei due
articoli che seguono. (IS)
=== A ===
http://www.balkanpeace.org/temp/tmp13.html
7th Bosnian Muslim Brigade, based in Zenica - the international Islamic
mercenary force known as the mujahedeen
(photo)
Alija Izetbegovic with members of 7th Brigade
"... The first and foremost of such conclusions is surely the one on
the incompatibility of Islam and non-Islamic systems. There can be no
peace or coexistence between the "Islamic faith" and non- Islamic
societies and political institutions. ... Islam clearly excludes the
right and possibility of activity of any strange ideology on its own
turf. Therefore, there is no question of any laicistic principles, and
the state should be an expression and should support the moral concepts
of the religion. ..." page 22 "The Islamic Declaration" book ("Islamska
deklaracija"), written by Mr. Alija Izetbegovic, Bosnian Muslim leader.
In preparing the ground for the conflicts between Bosnian Cristians
(Croats and Serbs) and Bosnian Muslims, residents of different Arab
countries who in the B&H had recognized the elements and challenge of
“a holy war” - jihad. Coming from different Arab countries, most of
them were from Yemen, Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia and Afghanistan, and
bringing with them experience from a war from some of the Islamic
trouble spots.
Mujahedin, or «holy warriors», is a generic term for Muslim volunteers
fighting in the former Yugoslavia. Many Mujahedin originate from Muslim
countries outside the former Yugoslavia. It was reported that the
Mujahedin began arriving in BiH as early as June 1992. (Tom Post & Joel
Brand, «Help from the Holy Warriors», Newsweek, 5 October 1992, at 52).
Reports on the number of Mujahedin forces operating in BiH vary, but it
is unlikely that the Mujahedin forces have made a significant military
contribution to the BiH Government's war effort (Christopher Lockwood,
«Muslim Nations Offer Troops», Daily Telegraph, 14 July 1993, at 14.
According to Lockwood, Muslim nations depended on Western logistical
support to deliver troops to BiH. He concludes that the same logistical
troubles which kept the Muslim troops promised in July of 1993 from
joining UN forces in the UN declared «safe havens» also limited the
number of Muslim volunteers in the BiH armed forces. He states that the
number of Mujahedin in BiH never exceeded three or four hundred. See
also Mohamed Sid-Ahmad, «Muslim World Between Two Fires», War Report,
January 1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 63744. However, the Belgrade Daily,
Vecernje Novosti, reported that as many as 30,000 Mujahedin were
operating in BiH. «Other Reports in Brief: Muslims from Abroad Settling
in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belgrade Daily Claims», BBC, Summary of
World Broadcasts, 19 September 1992. )
The Mujahedin forces came from several Muslim states and many of them
were veterans of the Afghan war. (Andrew Hogg, «Arabs Join in Bosnia
Battle», Sunday Times, 30 August 1992)
Reports submitted to the Commission of Experts alleged that the
Mujahedin have been responsible for the mutilation and killing of
civilians, rape, looting, the destruction of property, and the
expulsion of non-Muslim populations. The deputy commander of the BiH
Army, Colonel Stjepan Siber, has said, «it was a mistake to let them
[the Mujahedin] here . . . They commit most of the atrocities and work
against the interests of the Muslim people. They have been killing,
looting and stealing.» Andrew Hogg, «Terror Trail of the Mujahedin»,
Sunday Times, 27 June 1993.
Several reports indicate that the Mujahedin were placed under the
command of the BiH Army.(See «Some 400 Mujahedin Volunteers Fighting
with Bosnian Muslims», Agence France Presse, 22 September 1992; Andrew
Hogg, «Arabs Join in Bosnia Battle», Sunday Times, 30 August 1992; see
also Charles McLoed, ECMM, «Report on Inter-Ethnic Violence in Vitez,
Busovaca and Zenica», April 1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 20178- 20546, at
20207; Croatian Information Centre, Weekly Bulletin, No. 9, 4 October
1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 36434-36438, at 36435; US Department of State,
1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 62612-62877, at 62648, 62724, 62730, and 62756)
The Mujahedin forces were closely associated with the 5th Corps, the
6th and 7th Zenica Brigades, the 7th Travnik Brigade, and the 45th
Muslim Brigade which belongs to the 6th Corps in Konjic of the Army of
BiH (US Department of State, 1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 62612-62877, at
62648; see also Croatian Information Centre, Weekly Bulletin, No. 9, 4
October 1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 36434-36438, at 36435; «Continuing Clashes
in Northwestern Enclave Reported from Both Sides», BBC, Summary of
World Broadcasts, 14 December 1993.)
They also allegedly fought alongside the Muslim Police, the Krajiska
Brigade from Travnik, units of Kosovo Muslims, Albanian soldiers, and
paramilitary groups such as the «Green Legion» and the «Black
Swans».(Charles McLoed, ECMM, Report on Inter-Ethnic Violence in Vitez,
Busovaca and Zenica, April 1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 20178-20546, at 20207;
Croatian Information Centre, Weekly Bulletin, No. 9, 4 October 1993,
IHRLI Doc. No. 36434-36438, at 36435; US Department of State, 1993,
IHRLI Doc. No. 62612-62877, at 62648, 62724, 62730, and 62756.)
Reports also indicate that the Mujahedin had the support of President
Izetbegovic and his government. *57 This was demonstrated in the Bihac
pocket, where the Mujahedin joined BiH forces loyal to Izetbegovic.
Together, these forces battled separatist forces who entered into a
separate peace treaty with Bosnian Serbs («Continuing Clashes in
Northwestern Enclave Reported form Both Sides», BBC, Summary of World
Broadcasts, 14 December 1993)
In Zenica, between 31 August and 2 September 1992, 250 Mujahedin troops
allegedly come to BiH from Turkey, Qatar, Bahrain and Iran. These
troops worked alongside the Green Legion and HOS paramilitary groups
stationed in Zenica. The Mujahedin allegedly also operated a camp at
Arnauti.(Charles McLeod, ECMM, Report on Inter-Ethnic Violence in
Vitez, Buscovaca and Zenica, April 1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 29043-29131, at
29064; Biljaja Plavsic, Republic of Serbia Presidency, To Serbs All
Over the World, 30 September 1992, IHRLI Doc. No. 48072- 48093, at
48081)
It was reported that a unit of the Mujahedin, called the «Guerilla»,
participated in the 16 April 1993 attack on Vitez and attempted to
exchange 10 HVO hostages for foreign prisoners held in HVO prisons. (US
Department of State, 1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 62612-62877, at 62629; see
also Charles McLeod, ECMM, Report on Inter-Ethnic Violence in Vitez,
Busovaca and Zenica, April 1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 29043-29131, at 29072
(attack on Vitez).
The Croatian Ministry of Defence is reported to have provided
information about an event occurring in June 1993 -- a joint
BiH/Mujahedin unit reportedly attacked Travnik, allegedly forcing 4,000
Croatian civilians and military personnel out of the town. (US
Department of State, 1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 62612-62877, at 62650. Media
reports however claim that Croats left Travnik voluntarily. The
incident was investigated by an organization, which reported that the
forceful eviction did not take place)
The Mujahedin allegedly fought alongside the 6th Muslim Brigade from
Zenica and the Krajiska Brigade from Travnik. Witnesses stated that
they saw Mujahedin operating in small patrols ahead of the approaching
BiH troops.
According to HVO intelligence, Mujahedin forces arrived in Travnik
sometime before June 1993 and came from Algeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan
and Iran. The Mujahedin trained at a camp at Mehurici, where they were
allegedly financed and equipped by a man named Abdulah, the owner of
the «Palma» video store in Travnik. Once in town, the Mujahedin were
linked to the Seventh Brigade of the BiH Army, and were reportedly
assembled into units of 10 to 15 men, and moved about on regular
patrols. The Mujahedin created tension in Travnik in the days prior to
the attack on 3 June. One witness stated that the Mujahedin directed
their actions towards the HVO personnel in town. They allegedly
demonstrated, shouted slogans and fired their rifles in the air.
Mujahedin allegedly participated in the attack on Maljine in Novi
Travnik on 8 June 1993, killing 20 to 30 HVO members and transporting
Croatian women and children to the training centre at
Mehurici.(Croatian Information Centre, Weekly Bulletin, No. 1, 9 August
1993)
In Konjic, the Mujahedin were part of a 100 member force stationed at
Liscioi and led by Haso Hakalovic. The unit was assembled in February
1993 and included some Kosovo Muslims and members of the Black Swans
from the Igman mountain region. (US Department of State, 1993, IHRLI
Doc. No. 62612-62877, at 62756)
Allegedly, Mujahedin troops killed and expelled villagers, and looted
and burned homes, when they moved against the Jablanica- Konjic area.
The Mujahedin troops and members of the Black Swans reportedly
conducted occasional raids without members of BiH forces. (at IHRLI
Doc. No. 62752 and 62756. The village of Vrci was attacked on 25 May,
and the village of Radesine was attacked on 10 June. See also Tadeusz
Mazowiecki, Fifth Periodic Report on the Situation of Human Rights in
the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/1994/47, 17
November 1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 52399-52435, at 52405 (alleging that the
Mujahedin were involved in attacks at Kopjari on 21 October, Doljani on
27 and 28 June, and Maljane on 8 June). UN Special Rapporteur
Mazowiecki claims that corpses of Mujahedin victims displayed evidence
of protracted cruelty and mutilation. )
Reportedly, the Mujahedin volunteers arrived in Konjic in small groups.
It was reported that they were from Afghanistan and that they claimed
to be students. They were allegedly armed with Hekleri automatic
weapons and former JNA equipment. Some Mujahedin were reportedly former
students with no military experience.
Mujahedin forces were present in Mostar since early June 1993. They
were reportedly stationed in the Santica neighbourhood on the
Muslim/HVO front, where they manned bunkers, usually in groups of six
or seven, armed with 7.62 millimetre semi-automatic weapons,
machine-guns, and Zolja anti-tank weapons. They were billeted in a
building they shared with the Muslim military police on the east bank
of the Neretva River. The Mujahedin forces apparently left Mostar on 15
August. (US Department of State, 1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 62612-62877, at
62742 and 62677. For more details on the location of the Neretva living
quarters, see Id. at 62739)
FRY reported that the Mujahedin began operations near Teslic in July
and August of 1992. Troops from Saudi Arabia allegedly killed three
Serbian Territorial Defence members and placed the victims' severed
heads on poles near the «Tesanj turret». (Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia, Second Report Submitted to the Commission of Experts, 1993,
IHRLI Doc. No. 28401-29019, at 28533)
Beheadings of Serbs by Mujahedin forces have also been reported in
other areas.
The Mujahedin were also alleged to be part of the forces that invaded
the village of Trusina near Foca on 15 April 1993. According to the
report, attackers wore white ribbons on their arms and fought beside
Albanian Muslim troops. Twenty-two civilians reportedly died in the
attack. (US Department of State, 1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 62612-62877, at
62648; Croatian Information Centre, Weekly Bulletin, No. 9, 4 October
1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 36434-36438, at 36435)
The Mujahedin allegedly performed crude circumcisions upon Serbian
police forces, who were later treated by an American surgeon at the
Kosevo hospital in Sarajevo. (Letter dated 7 December 1992 from the
Deputy Representative of the US to U.N. Secretary-General, U.N. Doc.
S/24918, 8 December 1992, IHRLI Doc. No. 3160-3177, at 3173; Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia, Second Report Submitted to the Commission of
Experts, 1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 28401-29019, at 28566)
(photo)
This photograph was seized from Saudi Arabian fighters captured in Crni
Vrh near Teslic, Bosnia. A Muslim solder displays the severed head of
Blagoje Blagojevic, a Serb from the village of Jasenovo near Teslic.
(photo)
The severed heads of three Serbs (identified as Blagoje Blagojevic,
Nenad Petkovic, and Brana Djuric) beheaded by Muslim fighters. This
picture was seized from Saudi Arabian solders captured near Teslic in
Bosnia.
LINKS:
7th Brigade, loyal Islamic force
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/timbeat4.htm
Director of the U.S. Congress' Task Force on Terrorism and
Unconventional warfare: "Some Call It Peace"
http://members.tripod.com/Balkania/resources/geostrategy/
bodansky_peace/bp_part1.html
7th Muslim "Liberation" Brigade
http://www.wargamer.com/sp/military/bih/armija/foreign.asp
Washington Post - Iranians Form Terror Force in Bosnia
http://impact.users.netlink.co.uk/namir/sreport.htm
Bosnia losing the pluralistic character
http://www.bosnet.org/archive/bosnet.w3archive/9501/msg00252.html
No future for Muslims in Europe unless they have a state of their own
http://www.amber.ucsf.edu/homes/ross/public_html/bosnia_/mus.txt
US Senate Document; Clinton-Approved Iranian Arms Transfers Help Turn
Bosnia into Militant Islamic Base
http://www.senate.gov/~rpc/releases/1997/iran.htm
A BOSNIAN VILLAGE'S TERRORIST
http://www.mfa.gov.yu/Aktuelno/BIVSE/BiH/wpost11032000_e.html
The Second Coming of Alija Izetbegovic
http://www.balkanpeace.org/our/our05.shtml
Selling the Bosnian Myth to America: Part I-Buyer Beware
http://reagan.com/HotTopics.main/HotMike/document-12.11.2000.3.html
Army suspects munitions manufactured for Bosnian army
http://archive.nandotimes.com/newsroom/nt/0204yugfff.html
Similarity - The 13th Waffen-Gebirgs Division der SS Handschar
http://www.wssob.com/013divhnd.html
Jihad - the "Holly War"
http://blaskic.croat.net/jihad.htm
=== B ===
The Los Angeles Times
October 7, 2001
Bosnia Seen as Hospitable Base and Sanctuary for Terrorists
By CRAIG PYES, JOSH MEYER and WILLIAM C. REMPEL , Times Staff Writers
ZENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Hundreds of foreign Islamic extremists
who became Bosnian citizens after battling Serbian and Croatian forces
present a potential terrorist threat to Europe and the United States,
according to a classified U.S. State Department report and interviews
with international military and intelligence sources.
The extremists include hard-core terrorists, some with ties to Osama
bin Laden, protected by militant elements of the former Sarajevo
government. Bosnia-Herzegovina is "a staging area and safe haven" for
terrorists, said a former senior State Department official.
The secret report, prepared late last year for the Clinton
administration, warned of problem passport-holders in Bosnia in numbers
that "shocked everyone," the former official said. The White House
leaned on Bosnia and its then-president, Alija Izetbegovic, to do
something about the matter, "but nothing happened," he said.
Although no evidence connects any Bosnian group to the suicide
hijacking attacks of Sept. 11 blamed on Bin Laden, U.S. and European
officials are increasingly concerned about the scope and reach of Bin
Laden networks in the West and the proximity of Bosnia-based terrorists
to the heart of Europe.
A number of the extremists "would travel with impunity and conduct,
plan and stage terrorist acts with impunity while hiding behind their
Bosnian passports," the former official said.
In several instances, terrorists with links to Bosnia have launched
actions against Western targets:
* An Algerian with Bosnian citizenship, described by a U.S. official as
"a junior Osama bin Laden," tried to help smuggle explosives in 1998 to
an Egyptian terrorist group plotting to destroy U.S. military
installations in Germany. The shipment included military C-4 plastic
explosives and blasting caps, the former U.S. official said. The CIA
intercepted the shipment, foiling the attack.
* Another North African with Bosnian citizenship belonged to a
terrorist cell in Montreal that conspired in the failed millennium plot
to bomb Los Angeles International Airport.
* One of Bin Laden's top lieutenants--a Palestinian linked to major
terrorist plots in Jordan, France and the United States--had operatives
in Bosnia and was issued a Bosnian passport, according to U.S.
officials.
After the foiled plot against American bases in Germany, the U.S.
suspended without public explanation a military aid program to Bosnia
in 1999 in an attempt to force the deportation of the Algerian leader
of the group, Abdelkader Mokhtari, also known as Abu el Maali.
Finally, after the U.S. went a step further and threatened to stop all
economic aid, Izetbegovic agreed to deport El Maali. But the Algerian
was back in Bosnia within a year. Two months ago, he was reported to be
moving in and out of the country freely. He is now thought to be in
Afghanistan with the leadership of Bin Laden's Al Qaeda group,
according to a senior official for the NATO-led peacekeeping force,
SFOR, in Bosnia.
President Clinton's secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, personally
appealed to Izetbegovic to oust suspected terrorists or rescind their
Bosnian passports.
The effort by top State Department aides continued through the last
days of the administration. "It wasn't just one meeting, it was 10 to
12, with orders directly from the White House," said a former State
Department official.
Izetbegovic declined the appeals, several sources said, apparently out
of loyalty to the fighters who had come to his country's rescue. The
president argued that many had married Bosnian women, had taken up
farming and were legal citizens.
"The point we kept making to Izetbegovic was that if the day comes we
find out that these people are connected to some terrible terrorist
incident, that's the day the entire U.S.-Bosnia relationship will
change from friends to adversaries," the former State Department
official said.
Senior U.S. and SFOR officials believe that some hard-line members of
Izetbegovic's political party gave direct support, through their
control of the Foreign Ministry and local passport operations, to
foreign Islamic extremists with ties to Bin Laden.
Although Izetbegovic stepped down in October 2000, many hard-liners
remain in Bosnia's bureaucracy, and they are suspected of operating
their own rogue intelligence service that protects Islamic extremists,
military and intelligence sources said.
Last week, Bosnia's new interior minister, citing "trustworthy
intelligence sources," said scores of Bin Laden associates may be
trying to flee Afghanistan ahead of anticipated U.S. military reprisals
for the Sept. 11 attacks, seeking refuge among militant sympathizers in
Bosnia. The minister, Mohammed Besic, vowed to intercept any who try to
enter the country.
U.S. and SFOR officials acknowledge that the new coalition government
in Sarajevo has become much more responsive to fighting terrorism. A
senior State Department official lauded Sarajevo this year for "working
with the international community" in trying to clamp down on suspected
terrorists.
Since Sept. 11, Bosnia has launched an audit of passports and mounted a
more intensive crackdown on naturalized citizens who are wanted by
foreign law enforcement agencies. After years of inaction, several
international fugitives have been arrested this year and extradited.
Western Interests in Balkans May Be at Risk
Bosnia has a large Muslim population, most of whom do not practice a
strict form of Islam.
A senior State Department official cautioned that "a lot of people's
interests are served by hyping the terrorism problem in the Balkans,"
referring to anti-Muslim sentiment among other ethnic groups there.
But, he added, "that is not to say there are not bad people who would
exploit the weaknesses in the government and the lax security and use
[Bosnia] as a place to hide."
To date, Western interests in the Balkans have not been terrorist
targets. However, a senior peacekeeping official in Bosnia said local
police report that "there are plans to attack the Western interests
here in Bosnia after any future retaliatory strikes in Afghanistan. We
don't have anything to confirm it."
Bosnia has traditionally served as "an R&R [rest and recreation]
destination" for members of Bin Laden's organization and other
extremists, according to U.S. officials and the peacekeeping force.
"They come to Bosnia to chill out, because so many other places are too
hot for them," said a former State Department official active in
counter-terrorism.
They also use Bosnian passports to travel worldwide without drawing the
kind of scrutiny that those who hold Middle Eastern or North African
documents might attract, officials said. Bosnian passports are
particularly valuable for ease of travel to other Muslim countries
where no visa requirement is imposed on Bosnians.
Under the Izetbegovic government, the immigration system was so
unregulated that Bin Laden allies "would get boxes of blank passports
and just print them up themselves," the former State Department
official said.
A military official said that "for the right amount of money, you can
get a Bosnian passport even though it's the first time you've stepped
foot into Bosnia."
Among those who Western intelligence sources say was granted Bosnian
citizenship and passports was Abu Zubeida, one of Bin Laden's top
lieutenants. Zubeida, a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip, was in charge
of contacts with other Islamic terrorist networks and controlled
admissions to terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. He arranged
training for unsuccessful millennium bomb plots in Canada and Jordan
and a recently foiled suicide attack on the U.S. Embassy in Paris,
according to court records and investigative reports.
Zubeida also asked LAX bomb plot figure Ahmed Ressam to get blank
Canadian passports that would allow other terrorists to infiltrate the
United States, according to testimony from Ressam, who was convicted in
the bomb plot and is cooperating with investigators.
Another terrorist with Bosnian credentials is Karim Said Atmani, a
Moroccan who was Ressam's roommate in Montreal and who was in the group
that plotted to bomb LAX, according to testimony. The Bosnian
government arrested him in April, and Atmani was extradited to France,
where he awaits sentencing on terrorism charges.
Beginning in 1992, as many as 4,000 volunteers from throughout North
Africa, the Middle East and Europe came to Bosnia to fight Serbian and
Croatian nationalists on behalf of fellow Muslims. They are known as
the moujahedeen. A military analyst called them "pretty good fighters
and certainly ruthless."
"I think the Muslims wouldn't have survived without this" help, Richard
Holbrooke, the United States' former chief Balkans peace negotiator,
said in a recent interview. At the time, U.N. peacekeepers were proving
ineffective at protecting Bosnian civilians, and an arms embargo
diminished Bosnia's fighting capabilities.
But Holbrooke called the arrival of the moujahedeen "a pact with the
devil" from which Bosnia still is recovering.
The foreign moujahedeen units were disbanded and required to leave the
Balkans under the terms of the 1995 Dayton, Ohio, peace accord. But
many stayed--about 400, according to official Bosnian estimates.
Although the State Department report suggested that the number could be
higher, a senior SFOR official said allied military intelligence
estimated that no more than 200 foreign-born militants actually live in
Bosnia, of which closer to 30 represent a hard-core group with direct
links to terrorism.
"These are the bad guys--the ones you have to worry about," the
official said.
But he also said that "hundreds of other" Islamic extremists with and
without Bosnian passports "come in and out" and that Bosnia remains a
center for Al Qaeda recruiting and logistics support.
Bin Laden Reportedly Financed Recruits
A U.S. counter-terrorism official confirmed that "several hundred"
former moujahedeen remain in Bosnia. "Are they a threat? Absolutely.
Are we all over them? Absolutely," he said.
The fighters were organized as an all-moujahedeen unit called El
Moujahed. It was headquartered in Zenica in an abandoned hillside
factory, a compound with a hospital and prayer hall.
Bin Laden financed small convoys of recruits from the Arab world
through his businesses in Sudan, according to Mideast intelligence
reports. Other support and recruits for El Moujahed came, at least in
part, through Islamic organizations in Milan, Italy, and Istanbul,
Turkey, that European investigators later linked to trafficking in
passports and weapons for terrorists.
A series of national security and criminal investigations across Europe
have since identified the El Moujahed unit in court filings as the
"common cradle" from which an international terrorist network grew and
ultimately stretched from the Middle East to Canada.
Abu el Maali, its leader during the Bosnian war, remains an enigmatic
figure, charismatic and popular within the moujahedeen but barely known
outside. He briefly appeared in a propaganda video on El Moujahed
during the war, but his face was digitally removed before distribution.
French court documents say El Maali now is the leader of terrorist
cells in Bosnia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Court testimony, confidential police records and interviews with
European intelligence officials show how El Maali marshaled recruits
from the West and Muslim countries to assemble the infrastructure of
what would become a terrorist organization.
Two French converts to Islam, both in their mid-20s, were among the
early volunteers for El Maali's ranks in the Bosnian war. Christophe
Caze, a medical school dropout, and Lionel Dumont joined El Moujahed to
provide humanitarian services. But once assigned to the moujahedeen
unit in Zenica, they immediately "plunged into violence," an associate
told French police.
A French judicial official said their eventual passage to terrorism was
strongly influenced by El Maali, with whom they became close. El Maali
"exerted a lot of influence on the fighters . . . which led them to
commit these violent actions under the cover of Islam," the magistrate
said.
The converts emerged as leaders, rendering impassioned exhortations to
younger volunteers to defend Islam "by all means," according to court
records. They also began setting up a clandestine network in France,
creating multiple identities, encoding phone lists and recruiting
followers they could call into action later. Court records say that
Caze, working as a medic, recruited future terrorists among the wounded
he treated.
At the war's end, U.S. officials focused on state-sponsored terrorism
and worried about getting Iranian fighters back to Iran. Less clear
were the implications of loosely allied extremist groups and
individuals.
Looking back, peace negotiator Holbrooke blamed imprecise and "sloppy
intelligence" for failing to distinguish which Muslim groups posed a
threat to the United States. It turned out that Iranian fighters went
home. Many of El Maali's trained warriors did not.
Spasm of Violence Hits Northern France
In Bosnia, most of the violence stopped with the peace accord in 1995.
But in January 1996, it broke out again--on the streets of northern
France.
A puzzling crime wave swept the area around Roubaix, a gritty,
Muslim-majority town near the Belgian border. Small groups of men began
holding up stores and drivers. They brandished machine guns and wore
hoods and carnival masks. Two people were killed.
On March 28, just before a Group of 7 summit of leading industrial
nations that would bring top ministers to Lille, police discovered a
stolen car abandoned in front of the police station. It was parked
askew. And it contained a bomb packed into three gas cylinders rigged
to devastate everything within 600 feet. It was disarmed.
The next night, a special tactical squad surrounded a house at 59 Rue
Henri Carette in Roubaix that had been linked to the booby-trapped car.
Police fired thousands of rounds into the building. The house erupted
in flames because of munitions inside, police said later. Four charred
bodies were recovered.
Two men fled the barrage and inferno. At a police roadblock just inside
Belgium, another furious gun battle erupted. One of the men was killed,
and his accomplice was wounded.
In the getaway car, police found rocket launchers, automatic weapons,
large amounts of ammunition and grenades. They also recovered an
electronic organizer containing coded telephone contacts, nearly a
dozen of them in Bosnia. The dead ringleader was identified as
Christophe Caze, the young medic who went to fight in Bosnia.
French authorities, confused about the motives for the spasm of gang
violence, considered it a new phenomenon, calling it "gangster
terrorism." Their investigation uncovered what may have been the first
terrorism cell exported from Bosnia.
After an investigation of the surviving associate, Caze's electronic
organizer and other evidence recovered by French police, the robbery
gang was identified as nine militants who attended a local mosque. Most
of them had undergone military training at the El Moujahed compound in
Bosnia.
The armed robberies were a radical form of fund-raising by Caze and his
associates to benefit their "Muslim brothers in Algeria." Their
high-powered weapons were smuggled home from the Bosnian war.
Caze's organizer was described by one official as "the address book of
the professional terrorist." It contained phone contacts in England,
Italy, France and Canada, as well as direct lines to El Maali's Zenica
headquarters. It led French authorities to trace travels and phone
records and to set up electronic surveillance.
French counter-terrorism officials soon realized they had stumbled upon
more than a band of gangsters. Five years before the sophisticated
terrorist assault on the U.S., the French were starting to uncover
loosely linked violent networks spreading into several countries, all
tied together by a common thread: Bosnia.
One of the phone numbers in the dead terrorist's organizer led to a
suspect in Canada: Fateh Kamel, 41, who ran a small trinkets shop in
Montreal.
French authorities say Canada rejected their initial request to
investigate Kamel, calling the dapper Algerian "just a businessman."
But Kamel also was a confidant of El Maali. He spoke frequently to the
Bosnia moujahedeen chief over his wife's cell phone. Kamel had gone to
Bosnia early in the war, suffered a shrapnel wound in one leg and been
treated at the El Moujahed hospital by Caze, the young medic.
Kamel first came to the attention of European intelligence officials in
1994, when Italian agents tracking suspected terrorists stumbled upon
him recruiting fighters in Milan for El Maali's brigade.
After the Dayton accord, French police say, Kamel became deeply
involved in terrorist logistics. He was "the principal activist of an
international network determined to plan assassinations and to procure
arms and passports for terrorist acts all over the world," according to
a French court document.
In 1996, an Italian surveillance team recorded Kamel discussing a
terrorist attack and taped him declaring: "I do not fear death . . .
because the jihad is the jihad, and to kill is easy for me."
During the same period, Kamel assisted other North African extremists
relocating to Canada, exploiting the country's lax immigration laws and
Quebec's eagerness for French-speaking immigrants such as Algerians.
According to French investigators, Kamel was the leader of a terrorist
cell in Montreal. Other members included Ressam, Atmani and a third
roommate, Mustafa Labsi.
Like Kamel, Atmani had served in Bosnia and was close to El Maali. A
U.S. law enforcement official described Atmani as a "crazy warrior with
a nose so broken and twisted that he could sniff around corners."
Later, authorities believe, the three roommates went to Afghanistan
together to train for a terrorist attack on the United States. They
returned to the West after learning that their target would be Los
Angeles International Airport. The conspiracy was interrupted when
Atmani was deported from Canada to Bosnia.
When Ressam, traveling alone, was captured at the border with
explosives in his rental car, U.S. officials tried to track down his
former roommate Atmani. Authorities had information that he was
traveling between Sarajevo and Istanbul, but Bosnian officials denied
even that Atmani had been deported there. Investigators later learned
that Atmani had been issued a new Bosnian passport six months earlier.
Atmani was part of the hard-core terrorist group noted in the secret
State Department report. He remained beyond the reach of international
extradition until this year, when he was arrested and turned over to
France by Bosnia's new coalition government. He awaits sentencing on
terrorism charges.
Kamel, the alleged ringleader of the group, was arrested in Jordan and
was extradited to France, where he is in prison on a terrorism
conviction. Ressam and Labsi also have been jailed. All of the members
of the former Montreal cell have been convicted of being operatives in
a terrorist network that originated in Bosnia.
James Steinberg, deputy national security advisor in the Clinton
administration, said that although the U.S. works closely with
countries in the Balkans to deal with "the problem of these cells," the
very nature of secret terrorist organizations confounds those efforts.
"It's one thing to [arrest] the people you know [are terrorists], but
then the others . . . bury themselves even deeper," he said.
1: MUJAHEDDIN A ZENICA E DINTORNI
A. 7th Bosnian Muslim Brigade, based in Zenica - the international
Islamic mercenary force known as the mujahedeen
+ interesting LINKS
B. Bosnia Seen as Hospitable Base and Sanctuary for Terrorists (Los
Angeles Times)
NOTA:
Sul quotidiano Vecernji List di Zagabria del 3/8/2003 e' scritto che i
due attentatori che con il Boeing si sono schiantati contro il
Pentagono l'11 Settembre, nel 1995 combattevano in Bosnia-Erzegovina. I
loro nomi sarebbero Khalid Al-Mihdhar e Nawaf Al-Hasmir.
Non sappiamo se questi due personaggi si siano veramente schiantati sul
Pentagono. Quello che invece e' assodato e' che militanti islamisti di
svariata provenienza hanno combattuto in Bosnia, al fianco di
Izetbegovic, Clinton ed Adriano Sofri, come e' ben spiegato nei due
articoli che seguono. (IS)
=== A ===
http://www.balkanpeace.org/temp/tmp13.html
7th Bosnian Muslim Brigade, based in Zenica - the international Islamic
mercenary force known as the mujahedeen
(photo)
Alija Izetbegovic with members of 7th Brigade
"... The first and foremost of such conclusions is surely the one on
the incompatibility of Islam and non-Islamic systems. There can be no
peace or coexistence between the "Islamic faith" and non- Islamic
societies and political institutions. ... Islam clearly excludes the
right and possibility of activity of any strange ideology on its own
turf. Therefore, there is no question of any laicistic principles, and
the state should be an expression and should support the moral concepts
of the religion. ..." page 22 "The Islamic Declaration" book ("Islamska
deklaracija"), written by Mr. Alija Izetbegovic, Bosnian Muslim leader.
In preparing the ground for the conflicts between Bosnian Cristians
(Croats and Serbs) and Bosnian Muslims, residents of different Arab
countries who in the B&H had recognized the elements and challenge of
“a holy war” - jihad. Coming from different Arab countries, most of
them were from Yemen, Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia and Afghanistan, and
bringing with them experience from a war from some of the Islamic
trouble spots.
Mujahedin, or «holy warriors», is a generic term for Muslim volunteers
fighting in the former Yugoslavia. Many Mujahedin originate from Muslim
countries outside the former Yugoslavia. It was reported that the
Mujahedin began arriving in BiH as early as June 1992. (Tom Post & Joel
Brand, «Help from the Holy Warriors», Newsweek, 5 October 1992, at 52).
Reports on the number of Mujahedin forces operating in BiH vary, but it
is unlikely that the Mujahedin forces have made a significant military
contribution to the BiH Government's war effort (Christopher Lockwood,
«Muslim Nations Offer Troops», Daily Telegraph, 14 July 1993, at 14.
According to Lockwood, Muslim nations depended on Western logistical
support to deliver troops to BiH. He concludes that the same logistical
troubles which kept the Muslim troops promised in July of 1993 from
joining UN forces in the UN declared «safe havens» also limited the
number of Muslim volunteers in the BiH armed forces. He states that the
number of Mujahedin in BiH never exceeded three or four hundred. See
also Mohamed Sid-Ahmad, «Muslim World Between Two Fires», War Report,
January 1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 63744. However, the Belgrade Daily,
Vecernje Novosti, reported that as many as 30,000 Mujahedin were
operating in BiH. «Other Reports in Brief: Muslims from Abroad Settling
in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belgrade Daily Claims», BBC, Summary of
World Broadcasts, 19 September 1992. )
The Mujahedin forces came from several Muslim states and many of them
were veterans of the Afghan war. (Andrew Hogg, «Arabs Join in Bosnia
Battle», Sunday Times, 30 August 1992)
Reports submitted to the Commission of Experts alleged that the
Mujahedin have been responsible for the mutilation and killing of
civilians, rape, looting, the destruction of property, and the
expulsion of non-Muslim populations. The deputy commander of the BiH
Army, Colonel Stjepan Siber, has said, «it was a mistake to let them
[the Mujahedin] here . . . They commit most of the atrocities and work
against the interests of the Muslim people. They have been killing,
looting and stealing.» Andrew Hogg, «Terror Trail of the Mujahedin»,
Sunday Times, 27 June 1993.
Several reports indicate that the Mujahedin were placed under the
command of the BiH Army.(See «Some 400 Mujahedin Volunteers Fighting
with Bosnian Muslims», Agence France Presse, 22 September 1992; Andrew
Hogg, «Arabs Join in Bosnia Battle», Sunday Times, 30 August 1992; see
also Charles McLoed, ECMM, «Report on Inter-Ethnic Violence in Vitez,
Busovaca and Zenica», April 1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 20178- 20546, at
20207; Croatian Information Centre, Weekly Bulletin, No. 9, 4 October
1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 36434-36438, at 36435; US Department of State,
1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 62612-62877, at 62648, 62724, 62730, and 62756)
The Mujahedin forces were closely associated with the 5th Corps, the
6th and 7th Zenica Brigades, the 7th Travnik Brigade, and the 45th
Muslim Brigade which belongs to the 6th Corps in Konjic of the Army of
BiH (US Department of State, 1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 62612-62877, at
62648; see also Croatian Information Centre, Weekly Bulletin, No. 9, 4
October 1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 36434-36438, at 36435; «Continuing Clashes
in Northwestern Enclave Reported from Both Sides», BBC, Summary of
World Broadcasts, 14 December 1993.)
They also allegedly fought alongside the Muslim Police, the Krajiska
Brigade from Travnik, units of Kosovo Muslims, Albanian soldiers, and
paramilitary groups such as the «Green Legion» and the «Black
Swans».(Charles McLoed, ECMM, Report on Inter-Ethnic Violence in Vitez,
Busovaca and Zenica, April 1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 20178-20546, at 20207;
Croatian Information Centre, Weekly Bulletin, No. 9, 4 October 1993,
IHRLI Doc. No. 36434-36438, at 36435; US Department of State, 1993,
IHRLI Doc. No. 62612-62877, at 62648, 62724, 62730, and 62756.)
Reports also indicate that the Mujahedin had the support of President
Izetbegovic and his government. *57 This was demonstrated in the Bihac
pocket, where the Mujahedin joined BiH forces loyal to Izetbegovic.
Together, these forces battled separatist forces who entered into a
separate peace treaty with Bosnian Serbs («Continuing Clashes in
Northwestern Enclave Reported form Both Sides», BBC, Summary of World
Broadcasts, 14 December 1993)
In Zenica, between 31 August and 2 September 1992, 250 Mujahedin troops
allegedly come to BiH from Turkey, Qatar, Bahrain and Iran. These
troops worked alongside the Green Legion and HOS paramilitary groups
stationed in Zenica. The Mujahedin allegedly also operated a camp at
Arnauti.(Charles McLeod, ECMM, Report on Inter-Ethnic Violence in
Vitez, Buscovaca and Zenica, April 1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 29043-29131, at
29064; Biljaja Plavsic, Republic of Serbia Presidency, To Serbs All
Over the World, 30 September 1992, IHRLI Doc. No. 48072- 48093, at
48081)
It was reported that a unit of the Mujahedin, called the «Guerilla»,
participated in the 16 April 1993 attack on Vitez and attempted to
exchange 10 HVO hostages for foreign prisoners held in HVO prisons. (US
Department of State, 1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 62612-62877, at 62629; see
also Charles McLeod, ECMM, Report on Inter-Ethnic Violence in Vitez,
Busovaca and Zenica, April 1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 29043-29131, at 29072
(attack on Vitez).
The Croatian Ministry of Defence is reported to have provided
information about an event occurring in June 1993 -- a joint
BiH/Mujahedin unit reportedly attacked Travnik, allegedly forcing 4,000
Croatian civilians and military personnel out of the town. (US
Department of State, 1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 62612-62877, at 62650. Media
reports however claim that Croats left Travnik voluntarily. The
incident was investigated by an organization, which reported that the
forceful eviction did not take place)
The Mujahedin allegedly fought alongside the 6th Muslim Brigade from
Zenica and the Krajiska Brigade from Travnik. Witnesses stated that
they saw Mujahedin operating in small patrols ahead of the approaching
BiH troops.
According to HVO intelligence, Mujahedin forces arrived in Travnik
sometime before June 1993 and came from Algeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan
and Iran. The Mujahedin trained at a camp at Mehurici, where they were
allegedly financed and equipped by a man named Abdulah, the owner of
the «Palma» video store in Travnik. Once in town, the Mujahedin were
linked to the Seventh Brigade of the BiH Army, and were reportedly
assembled into units of 10 to 15 men, and moved about on regular
patrols. The Mujahedin created tension in Travnik in the days prior to
the attack on 3 June. One witness stated that the Mujahedin directed
their actions towards the HVO personnel in town. They allegedly
demonstrated, shouted slogans and fired their rifles in the air.
Mujahedin allegedly participated in the attack on Maljine in Novi
Travnik on 8 June 1993, killing 20 to 30 HVO members and transporting
Croatian women and children to the training centre at
Mehurici.(Croatian Information Centre, Weekly Bulletin, No. 1, 9 August
1993)
In Konjic, the Mujahedin were part of a 100 member force stationed at
Liscioi and led by Haso Hakalovic. The unit was assembled in February
1993 and included some Kosovo Muslims and members of the Black Swans
from the Igman mountain region. (US Department of State, 1993, IHRLI
Doc. No. 62612-62877, at 62756)
Allegedly, Mujahedin troops killed and expelled villagers, and looted
and burned homes, when they moved against the Jablanica- Konjic area.
The Mujahedin troops and members of the Black Swans reportedly
conducted occasional raids without members of BiH forces. (at IHRLI
Doc. No. 62752 and 62756. The village of Vrci was attacked on 25 May,
and the village of Radesine was attacked on 10 June. See also Tadeusz
Mazowiecki, Fifth Periodic Report on the Situation of Human Rights in
the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/1994/47, 17
November 1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 52399-52435, at 52405 (alleging that the
Mujahedin were involved in attacks at Kopjari on 21 October, Doljani on
27 and 28 June, and Maljane on 8 June). UN Special Rapporteur
Mazowiecki claims that corpses of Mujahedin victims displayed evidence
of protracted cruelty and mutilation. )
Reportedly, the Mujahedin volunteers arrived in Konjic in small groups.
It was reported that they were from Afghanistan and that they claimed
to be students. They were allegedly armed with Hekleri automatic
weapons and former JNA equipment. Some Mujahedin were reportedly former
students with no military experience.
Mujahedin forces were present in Mostar since early June 1993. They
were reportedly stationed in the Santica neighbourhood on the
Muslim/HVO front, where they manned bunkers, usually in groups of six
or seven, armed with 7.62 millimetre semi-automatic weapons,
machine-guns, and Zolja anti-tank weapons. They were billeted in a
building they shared with the Muslim military police on the east bank
of the Neretva River. The Mujahedin forces apparently left Mostar on 15
August. (US Department of State, 1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 62612-62877, at
62742 and 62677. For more details on the location of the Neretva living
quarters, see Id. at 62739)
FRY reported that the Mujahedin began operations near Teslic in July
and August of 1992. Troops from Saudi Arabia allegedly killed three
Serbian Territorial Defence members and placed the victims' severed
heads on poles near the «Tesanj turret». (Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia, Second Report Submitted to the Commission of Experts, 1993,
IHRLI Doc. No. 28401-29019, at 28533)
Beheadings of Serbs by Mujahedin forces have also been reported in
other areas.
The Mujahedin were also alleged to be part of the forces that invaded
the village of Trusina near Foca on 15 April 1993. According to the
report, attackers wore white ribbons on their arms and fought beside
Albanian Muslim troops. Twenty-two civilians reportedly died in the
attack. (US Department of State, 1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 62612-62877, at
62648; Croatian Information Centre, Weekly Bulletin, No. 9, 4 October
1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 36434-36438, at 36435)
The Mujahedin allegedly performed crude circumcisions upon Serbian
police forces, who were later treated by an American surgeon at the
Kosevo hospital in Sarajevo. (Letter dated 7 December 1992 from the
Deputy Representative of the US to U.N. Secretary-General, U.N. Doc.
S/24918, 8 December 1992, IHRLI Doc. No. 3160-3177, at 3173; Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia, Second Report Submitted to the Commission of
Experts, 1993, IHRLI Doc. No. 28401-29019, at 28566)
(photo)
This photograph was seized from Saudi Arabian fighters captured in Crni
Vrh near Teslic, Bosnia. A Muslim solder displays the severed head of
Blagoje Blagojevic, a Serb from the village of Jasenovo near Teslic.
(photo)
The severed heads of three Serbs (identified as Blagoje Blagojevic,
Nenad Petkovic, and Brana Djuric) beheaded by Muslim fighters. This
picture was seized from Saudi Arabian solders captured near Teslic in
Bosnia.
LINKS:
7th Brigade, loyal Islamic force
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/timbeat4.htm
Director of the U.S. Congress' Task Force on Terrorism and
Unconventional warfare: "Some Call It Peace"
http://members.tripod.com/Balkania/resources/geostrategy/
bodansky_peace/bp_part1.html
7th Muslim "Liberation" Brigade
http://www.wargamer.com/sp/military/bih/armija/foreign.asp
Washington Post - Iranians Form Terror Force in Bosnia
http://impact.users.netlink.co.uk/namir/sreport.htm
Bosnia losing the pluralistic character
http://www.bosnet.org/archive/bosnet.w3archive/9501/msg00252.html
No future for Muslims in Europe unless they have a state of their own
http://www.amber.ucsf.edu/homes/ross/public_html/bosnia_/mus.txt
US Senate Document; Clinton-Approved Iranian Arms Transfers Help Turn
Bosnia into Militant Islamic Base
http://www.senate.gov/~rpc/releases/1997/iran.htm
A BOSNIAN VILLAGE'S TERRORIST
http://www.mfa.gov.yu/Aktuelno/BIVSE/BiH/wpost11032000_e.html
The Second Coming of Alija Izetbegovic
http://www.balkanpeace.org/our/our05.shtml
Selling the Bosnian Myth to America: Part I-Buyer Beware
http://reagan.com/HotTopics.main/HotMike/document-12.11.2000.3.html
Army suspects munitions manufactured for Bosnian army
http://archive.nandotimes.com/newsroom/nt/0204yugfff.html
Similarity - The 13th Waffen-Gebirgs Division der SS Handschar
http://www.wssob.com/013divhnd.html
Jihad - the "Holly War"
http://blaskic.croat.net/jihad.htm
=== B ===
The Los Angeles Times
October 7, 2001
Bosnia Seen as Hospitable Base and Sanctuary for Terrorists
By CRAIG PYES, JOSH MEYER and WILLIAM C. REMPEL , Times Staff Writers
ZENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Hundreds of foreign Islamic extremists
who became Bosnian citizens after battling Serbian and Croatian forces
present a potential terrorist threat to Europe and the United States,
according to a classified U.S. State Department report and interviews
with international military and intelligence sources.
The extremists include hard-core terrorists, some with ties to Osama
bin Laden, protected by militant elements of the former Sarajevo
government. Bosnia-Herzegovina is "a staging area and safe haven" for
terrorists, said a former senior State Department official.
The secret report, prepared late last year for the Clinton
administration, warned of problem passport-holders in Bosnia in numbers
that "shocked everyone," the former official said. The White House
leaned on Bosnia and its then-president, Alija Izetbegovic, to do
something about the matter, "but nothing happened," he said.
Although no evidence connects any Bosnian group to the suicide
hijacking attacks of Sept. 11 blamed on Bin Laden, U.S. and European
officials are increasingly concerned about the scope and reach of Bin
Laden networks in the West and the proximity of Bosnia-based terrorists
to the heart of Europe.
A number of the extremists "would travel with impunity and conduct,
plan and stage terrorist acts with impunity while hiding behind their
Bosnian passports," the former official said.
In several instances, terrorists with links to Bosnia have launched
actions against Western targets:
* An Algerian with Bosnian citizenship, described by a U.S. official as
"a junior Osama bin Laden," tried to help smuggle explosives in 1998 to
an Egyptian terrorist group plotting to destroy U.S. military
installations in Germany. The shipment included military C-4 plastic
explosives and blasting caps, the former U.S. official said. The CIA
intercepted the shipment, foiling the attack.
* Another North African with Bosnian citizenship belonged to a
terrorist cell in Montreal that conspired in the failed millennium plot
to bomb Los Angeles International Airport.
* One of Bin Laden's top lieutenants--a Palestinian linked to major
terrorist plots in Jordan, France and the United States--had operatives
in Bosnia and was issued a Bosnian passport, according to U.S.
officials.
After the foiled plot against American bases in Germany, the U.S.
suspended without public explanation a military aid program to Bosnia
in 1999 in an attempt to force the deportation of the Algerian leader
of the group, Abdelkader Mokhtari, also known as Abu el Maali.
Finally, after the U.S. went a step further and threatened to stop all
economic aid, Izetbegovic agreed to deport El Maali. But the Algerian
was back in Bosnia within a year. Two months ago, he was reported to be
moving in and out of the country freely. He is now thought to be in
Afghanistan with the leadership of Bin Laden's Al Qaeda group,
according to a senior official for the NATO-led peacekeeping force,
SFOR, in Bosnia.
President Clinton's secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, personally
appealed to Izetbegovic to oust suspected terrorists or rescind their
Bosnian passports.
The effort by top State Department aides continued through the last
days of the administration. "It wasn't just one meeting, it was 10 to
12, with orders directly from the White House," said a former State
Department official.
Izetbegovic declined the appeals, several sources said, apparently out
of loyalty to the fighters who had come to his country's rescue. The
president argued that many had married Bosnian women, had taken up
farming and were legal citizens.
"The point we kept making to Izetbegovic was that if the day comes we
find out that these people are connected to some terrible terrorist
incident, that's the day the entire U.S.-Bosnia relationship will
change from friends to adversaries," the former State Department
official said.
Senior U.S. and SFOR officials believe that some hard-line members of
Izetbegovic's political party gave direct support, through their
control of the Foreign Ministry and local passport operations, to
foreign Islamic extremists with ties to Bin Laden.
Although Izetbegovic stepped down in October 2000, many hard-liners
remain in Bosnia's bureaucracy, and they are suspected of operating
their own rogue intelligence service that protects Islamic extremists,
military and intelligence sources said.
Last week, Bosnia's new interior minister, citing "trustworthy
intelligence sources," said scores of Bin Laden associates may be
trying to flee Afghanistan ahead of anticipated U.S. military reprisals
for the Sept. 11 attacks, seeking refuge among militant sympathizers in
Bosnia. The minister, Mohammed Besic, vowed to intercept any who try to
enter the country.
U.S. and SFOR officials acknowledge that the new coalition government
in Sarajevo has become much more responsive to fighting terrorism. A
senior State Department official lauded Sarajevo this year for "working
with the international community" in trying to clamp down on suspected
terrorists.
Since Sept. 11, Bosnia has launched an audit of passports and mounted a
more intensive crackdown on naturalized citizens who are wanted by
foreign law enforcement agencies. After years of inaction, several
international fugitives have been arrested this year and extradited.
Western Interests in Balkans May Be at Risk
Bosnia has a large Muslim population, most of whom do not practice a
strict form of Islam.
A senior State Department official cautioned that "a lot of people's
interests are served by hyping the terrorism problem in the Balkans,"
referring to anti-Muslim sentiment among other ethnic groups there.
But, he added, "that is not to say there are not bad people who would
exploit the weaknesses in the government and the lax security and use
[Bosnia] as a place to hide."
To date, Western interests in the Balkans have not been terrorist
targets. However, a senior peacekeeping official in Bosnia said local
police report that "there are plans to attack the Western interests
here in Bosnia after any future retaliatory strikes in Afghanistan. We
don't have anything to confirm it."
Bosnia has traditionally served as "an R&R [rest and recreation]
destination" for members of Bin Laden's organization and other
extremists, according to U.S. officials and the peacekeeping force.
"They come to Bosnia to chill out, because so many other places are too
hot for them," said a former State Department official active in
counter-terrorism.
They also use Bosnian passports to travel worldwide without drawing the
kind of scrutiny that those who hold Middle Eastern or North African
documents might attract, officials said. Bosnian passports are
particularly valuable for ease of travel to other Muslim countries
where no visa requirement is imposed on Bosnians.
Under the Izetbegovic government, the immigration system was so
unregulated that Bin Laden allies "would get boxes of blank passports
and just print them up themselves," the former State Department
official said.
A military official said that "for the right amount of money, you can
get a Bosnian passport even though it's the first time you've stepped
foot into Bosnia."
Among those who Western intelligence sources say was granted Bosnian
citizenship and passports was Abu Zubeida, one of Bin Laden's top
lieutenants. Zubeida, a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip, was in charge
of contacts with other Islamic terrorist networks and controlled
admissions to terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. He arranged
training for unsuccessful millennium bomb plots in Canada and Jordan
and a recently foiled suicide attack on the U.S. Embassy in Paris,
according to court records and investigative reports.
Zubeida also asked LAX bomb plot figure Ahmed Ressam to get blank
Canadian passports that would allow other terrorists to infiltrate the
United States, according to testimony from Ressam, who was convicted in
the bomb plot and is cooperating with investigators.
Another terrorist with Bosnian credentials is Karim Said Atmani, a
Moroccan who was Ressam's roommate in Montreal and who was in the group
that plotted to bomb LAX, according to testimony. The Bosnian
government arrested him in April, and Atmani was extradited to France,
where he awaits sentencing on terrorism charges.
Beginning in 1992, as many as 4,000 volunteers from throughout North
Africa, the Middle East and Europe came to Bosnia to fight Serbian and
Croatian nationalists on behalf of fellow Muslims. They are known as
the moujahedeen. A military analyst called them "pretty good fighters
and certainly ruthless."
"I think the Muslims wouldn't have survived without this" help, Richard
Holbrooke, the United States' former chief Balkans peace negotiator,
said in a recent interview. At the time, U.N. peacekeepers were proving
ineffective at protecting Bosnian civilians, and an arms embargo
diminished Bosnia's fighting capabilities.
But Holbrooke called the arrival of the moujahedeen "a pact with the
devil" from which Bosnia still is recovering.
The foreign moujahedeen units were disbanded and required to leave the
Balkans under the terms of the 1995 Dayton, Ohio, peace accord. But
many stayed--about 400, according to official Bosnian estimates.
Although the State Department report suggested that the number could be
higher, a senior SFOR official said allied military intelligence
estimated that no more than 200 foreign-born militants actually live in
Bosnia, of which closer to 30 represent a hard-core group with direct
links to terrorism.
"These are the bad guys--the ones you have to worry about," the
official said.
But he also said that "hundreds of other" Islamic extremists with and
without Bosnian passports "come in and out" and that Bosnia remains a
center for Al Qaeda recruiting and logistics support.
Bin Laden Reportedly Financed Recruits
A U.S. counter-terrorism official confirmed that "several hundred"
former moujahedeen remain in Bosnia. "Are they a threat? Absolutely.
Are we all over them? Absolutely," he said.
The fighters were organized as an all-moujahedeen unit called El
Moujahed. It was headquartered in Zenica in an abandoned hillside
factory, a compound with a hospital and prayer hall.
Bin Laden financed small convoys of recruits from the Arab world
through his businesses in Sudan, according to Mideast intelligence
reports. Other support and recruits for El Moujahed came, at least in
part, through Islamic organizations in Milan, Italy, and Istanbul,
Turkey, that European investigators later linked to trafficking in
passports and weapons for terrorists.
A series of national security and criminal investigations across Europe
have since identified the El Moujahed unit in court filings as the
"common cradle" from which an international terrorist network grew and
ultimately stretched from the Middle East to Canada.
Abu el Maali, its leader during the Bosnian war, remains an enigmatic
figure, charismatic and popular within the moujahedeen but barely known
outside. He briefly appeared in a propaganda video on El Moujahed
during the war, but his face was digitally removed before distribution.
French court documents say El Maali now is the leader of terrorist
cells in Bosnia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Court testimony, confidential police records and interviews with
European intelligence officials show how El Maali marshaled recruits
from the West and Muslim countries to assemble the infrastructure of
what would become a terrorist organization.
Two French converts to Islam, both in their mid-20s, were among the
early volunteers for El Maali's ranks in the Bosnian war. Christophe
Caze, a medical school dropout, and Lionel Dumont joined El Moujahed to
provide humanitarian services. But once assigned to the moujahedeen
unit in Zenica, they immediately "plunged into violence," an associate
told French police.
A French judicial official said their eventual passage to terrorism was
strongly influenced by El Maali, with whom they became close. El Maali
"exerted a lot of influence on the fighters . . . which led them to
commit these violent actions under the cover of Islam," the magistrate
said.
The converts emerged as leaders, rendering impassioned exhortations to
younger volunteers to defend Islam "by all means," according to court
records. They also began setting up a clandestine network in France,
creating multiple identities, encoding phone lists and recruiting
followers they could call into action later. Court records say that
Caze, working as a medic, recruited future terrorists among the wounded
he treated.
At the war's end, U.S. officials focused on state-sponsored terrorism
and worried about getting Iranian fighters back to Iran. Less clear
were the implications of loosely allied extremist groups and
individuals.
Looking back, peace negotiator Holbrooke blamed imprecise and "sloppy
intelligence" for failing to distinguish which Muslim groups posed a
threat to the United States. It turned out that Iranian fighters went
home. Many of El Maali's trained warriors did not.
Spasm of Violence Hits Northern France
In Bosnia, most of the violence stopped with the peace accord in 1995.
But in January 1996, it broke out again--on the streets of northern
France.
A puzzling crime wave swept the area around Roubaix, a gritty,
Muslim-majority town near the Belgian border. Small groups of men began
holding up stores and drivers. They brandished machine guns and wore
hoods and carnival masks. Two people were killed.
On March 28, just before a Group of 7 summit of leading industrial
nations that would bring top ministers to Lille, police discovered a
stolen car abandoned in front of the police station. It was parked
askew. And it contained a bomb packed into three gas cylinders rigged
to devastate everything within 600 feet. It was disarmed.
The next night, a special tactical squad surrounded a house at 59 Rue
Henri Carette in Roubaix that had been linked to the booby-trapped car.
Police fired thousands of rounds into the building. The house erupted
in flames because of munitions inside, police said later. Four charred
bodies were recovered.
Two men fled the barrage and inferno. At a police roadblock just inside
Belgium, another furious gun battle erupted. One of the men was killed,
and his accomplice was wounded.
In the getaway car, police found rocket launchers, automatic weapons,
large amounts of ammunition and grenades. They also recovered an
electronic organizer containing coded telephone contacts, nearly a
dozen of them in Bosnia. The dead ringleader was identified as
Christophe Caze, the young medic who went to fight in Bosnia.
French authorities, confused about the motives for the spasm of gang
violence, considered it a new phenomenon, calling it "gangster
terrorism." Their investigation uncovered what may have been the first
terrorism cell exported from Bosnia.
After an investigation of the surviving associate, Caze's electronic
organizer and other evidence recovered by French police, the robbery
gang was identified as nine militants who attended a local mosque. Most
of them had undergone military training at the El Moujahed compound in
Bosnia.
The armed robberies were a radical form of fund-raising by Caze and his
associates to benefit their "Muslim brothers in Algeria." Their
high-powered weapons were smuggled home from the Bosnian war.
Caze's organizer was described by one official as "the address book of
the professional terrorist." It contained phone contacts in England,
Italy, France and Canada, as well as direct lines to El Maali's Zenica
headquarters. It led French authorities to trace travels and phone
records and to set up electronic surveillance.
French counter-terrorism officials soon realized they had stumbled upon
more than a band of gangsters. Five years before the sophisticated
terrorist assault on the U.S., the French were starting to uncover
loosely linked violent networks spreading into several countries, all
tied together by a common thread: Bosnia.
One of the phone numbers in the dead terrorist's organizer led to a
suspect in Canada: Fateh Kamel, 41, who ran a small trinkets shop in
Montreal.
French authorities say Canada rejected their initial request to
investigate Kamel, calling the dapper Algerian "just a businessman."
But Kamel also was a confidant of El Maali. He spoke frequently to the
Bosnia moujahedeen chief over his wife's cell phone. Kamel had gone to
Bosnia early in the war, suffered a shrapnel wound in one leg and been
treated at the El Moujahed hospital by Caze, the young medic.
Kamel first came to the attention of European intelligence officials in
1994, when Italian agents tracking suspected terrorists stumbled upon
him recruiting fighters in Milan for El Maali's brigade.
After the Dayton accord, French police say, Kamel became deeply
involved in terrorist logistics. He was "the principal activist of an
international network determined to plan assassinations and to procure
arms and passports for terrorist acts all over the world," according to
a French court document.
In 1996, an Italian surveillance team recorded Kamel discussing a
terrorist attack and taped him declaring: "I do not fear death . . .
because the jihad is the jihad, and to kill is easy for me."
During the same period, Kamel assisted other North African extremists
relocating to Canada, exploiting the country's lax immigration laws and
Quebec's eagerness for French-speaking immigrants such as Algerians.
According to French investigators, Kamel was the leader of a terrorist
cell in Montreal. Other members included Ressam, Atmani and a third
roommate, Mustafa Labsi.
Like Kamel, Atmani had served in Bosnia and was close to El Maali. A
U.S. law enforcement official described Atmani as a "crazy warrior with
a nose so broken and twisted that he could sniff around corners."
Later, authorities believe, the three roommates went to Afghanistan
together to train for a terrorist attack on the United States. They
returned to the West after learning that their target would be Los
Angeles International Airport. The conspiracy was interrupted when
Atmani was deported from Canada to Bosnia.
When Ressam, traveling alone, was captured at the border with
explosives in his rental car, U.S. officials tried to track down his
former roommate Atmani. Authorities had information that he was
traveling between Sarajevo and Istanbul, but Bosnian officials denied
even that Atmani had been deported there. Investigators later learned
that Atmani had been issued a new Bosnian passport six months earlier.
Atmani was part of the hard-core terrorist group noted in the secret
State Department report. He remained beyond the reach of international
extradition until this year, when he was arrested and turned over to
France by Bosnia's new coalition government. He awaits sentencing on
terrorism charges.
Kamel, the alleged ringleader of the group, was arrested in Jordan and
was extradited to France, where he is in prison on a terrorism
conviction. Ressam and Labsi also have been jailed. All of the members
of the former Montreal cell have been convicted of being operatives in
a terrorist network that originated in Bosnia.
James Steinberg, deputy national security advisor in the Clinton
administration, said that although the U.S. works closely with
countries in the Balkans to deal with "the problem of these cells," the
very nature of secret terrorist organizations confounds those efforts.
"It's one thing to [arrest] the people you know [are terrorists], but
then the others . . . bury themselves even deeper," he said.
