Il terrorismo "buono" / 3: Bosnia-Egitto-Pakistan
ITALIANO:
*** TERRORISMO: BOSNIA, EGIZIANO ARRESTATO FORSE MILITANTE JEMAAH (1
agosto 2003)
*** TERRORISMO: USA; SCOPERTA LISTA 20 FINANZIATORI DI OSAMA (19
febbraio 2003)
*** BOSNIA: SFOR, UOMO ARRESTATO IN OTTOBRE, LEGATO AD AL QAIDA (4
dicembre 2002)
*** La pista integralista tra Egitto e Kosovo. “Vendicheremo i nostri
fratelli arrestati” (1998 !!!)
ENGLISH:
*** Egyptian Islamic Extremist Arrested At Bosnian-Croat Border (1
August 2003)
*** Al-Qaeda may hijack aircraft in Croatia: American officials (1
August 2003)
*** Web sting links Hamza to terror camps. An Insight Investigation (20
July 2003)
*** BOSNIA: SFOR FREES SUSPECTED EXTREMIST (31 January 2003)
*** 9-11: The Balkans & Prior Warning (30 December 2002)
*** Bosnian, US officials meet on Algerians sent to Guantanamo (19
October 2002)
*** Nato worried about terrorists in Bosnia (3 April 2002)
*** Bosnia: Hub of Terrorist Axis? (25 March 2002)
*** Al-Qaida Plot Revealed in Sarajevo (23 March 2002)
*** U.S. supported al-Qaeda cells during Balkan Wars Fought Serbian
troops (15 March 2002)
*** Formenting Fundamentalism. Bosnia: A New Playground for Militant
Islamists? (17 January 2002)
=== ITALIANO ===
TERRORISMO: BOSNIA,EGIZIANO ARRESTATO FORSE MILITANTE JEMAAH
(ANSA) - SARAJEVO 1 AGO - Sarebbe un militante della Jemaah Islamyia
l'egiziano arrestato mercoledi' al valico di frontiera di Orasje, nel
nord, mentre lasciava la Bosnia con la moglie e i tre figli. Lo si e'
appreso da fonti della polizia.
Dell'uomo, che viaggiava con un falso passaporto belga a bordo di
un'automobile immatricolata in Germania, sono state diffuse solo le
iniziali del nome: J.A. Nel 2001 era stato privato della cittadinanza
bosniaca ottenuta durante la guerra (1992-1995) quando molti
volontari di paesi islamici hanno combattuto nelle fila dell'esercito
bosniaco-musulmano. Alcuni di essi hanno ottenuto la cittadinanza
sposando donne bosniache.
La Jemaa Islamyia e' un'organizzazione integralista egiziana messa
fuorilegge dal governo del Cairo. (ANSA).
VD 01/08/2003 17:19
http://www.ansa.it/balcani/bosnia/bosnia.shtml
---
TERRORISMO: USA; SCOPERTA LISTA 20 FINANZIATORI DI OSAMA
(ANSA) - NEW YORK, 19 FEB - L'intelligence americana
dispone di una lista di 20 ricchi musulmani che in varie zone del mondo
hanno finanziato e forse finanziano ancora Osama bin Laden e Al Qaida.
La lista e' stata trovata nel corso di una perquisizione negli uffici
in Bosnia di una fondazione di beneficienza islamica con sede a Chicago
e la sua esistenza e' emersa nel corso del processo al leader
dell'organizzazione. Enaam Arnaout, presidente e fondatore della
Benevolence International Foundation, un'organizzazione caritativa
attiva in tutto il mondo arabo, si e' dichiarato nei giorni scorsi a
Chicago colpevole di aver finanziato illegalmente la guerriglia in
Bosnia e Cecenia. La procura federale, in cambio della confessione, ha
ritirato le accuse contro di lui di legami con Al Qaida e ora attende
che Arnaout - che in passato ha combattuto al fianco di Osama in
Afghanistan - collabori con la giustizia nella lotta al terrorismo.
L'elenco dei 20 finanziatori e' stato sequestrato nel marzo 2002 e
fino ad ora figurava tra gli atti segreti del processo. I nominativi
dei personaggi che figurano nella lista sono ancora coperti dal
riserbo, ma fonti investigative hanno
spiegato che l'elenco e' servito in questi mesi per mettere a punto l'
offensiva americana contro le finanze di Al Qaida. In un rapporto
investigativo allegato alla lista, e' scritto che nei computer dell'
ufficio in Bosnia e' stato trovato un file intitolato 'La storia di
Osama', che conteneva ''una bozza scritta a mano con una lista di
quelli che dentro Al Qaida vengono indicati come 'la Catena Dorata',
una serie di ricchi finanziatori della causa dei mujahedin''. (ANSA).
BM 19/02/2003 16:46
http://www.ansa.it/balcani/bosnia/bosnia.shtml
---
BOSNIA: SFOR, UOMO ARRESTATO IN OTTOBRE, LEGATO AD AL QAIDA
(ANSA) - SARAJEVO, 4 DIC - La Forza di stabilizzazione della
Nato in Bosnia (Sfor) ha dichiarato che Sabahudin Fiuljanin, 32 anni,
arrestato il 26 ottobre scorso con l'accusa di spionaggio delle
installazioni e del personale di Sfor, e' legato alla rete terroristica
al Qaida. Lo hanno reso noto i media bosniaci.
Fiuljanin e' stato arrestato dalla Sfor nel nord-est della Bosnia e da
allora e' detenuto nella base americana di Orao, presso Tuzla, la
stessa che avrebbe spiato - secondo il quotidiano Oslobodjenje -
nascosto in un furgoncino.
Dei legami di Fiuljanin con al Qaida la Sfor ha informato ieri il primo
ministro e la polizia della Federazione Bh (entita' croato-musulmana di
Bosnia), ma il portavoce della Sfor Yves Venier non ha fornito altri
dettagli ''per non compromettere l'inchiesta in corso''.
Secondo la stampa di Sarajevo, che si richiama a fonti della
Sfor, Fiuljanin e' originario del Sangiaccato, regione della Jugoslavia
(Serbia e Montenegro) con una forte presenza musulmana, ma e'
naturalizzato bosniaco dopo aver combattuto durante la guerra (1992-95)
nell'unita' El-Mujahid
che aveva tra le file numerosi mujaheddin provenienti da Paesi islamici.
Fiuljanin, che e' sposato con una bosniaca ed ha quattro figli, ha
abitato nel villaggio di Bocinja, in Bosnia centrale, dove si erano
installate diverse famiglie degli ex-mujaheddin, rimasti in Bosnia dopo
il conflitto, e sfrattate due anni fa per permettere il ritorno dei
profughi serbi. Da Bocinja, con alcune altre famiglie, Fiuljanin si e'
trasferito in un villaggio isolato, Gornja Maoca, nella zona a nord di
Tuzla.
Nella sua casa, perquisita dopo il suo arresto, sono stati trovati una
pistola, un lanciarazzi anticarro e tre passaporti, di cui due bosniaci
e uno jugoslavo.
Secondo i giornali, la Sfor avrebbe anche trovato a bordo del
furgoncino di Fiuljanin una lettera d'addio, datata novembre dell'anno
scorso, come quelle che scrivono i kamikaze. (ANSA). COR*VD 04/12/2002
15:01
http://www.ansa.it/balcani/bosnia/bosnia.shtml
[NOTA: Come si puo' leggere piu' sotto, nell'articolo in lingua inglese
datato 31 gennaio 2003, il signor Fiuljanin e' stato prontamente
consegnato dalla SFOR alle autorita' di Sarajevo. D'altronde, sia la
NATO che il regime di Sarajevo sono state complici del terrorismo
islamista in Bosnia in funzione antijugoslava. Suona percio'
profondamente squallido questo tardivo "pianto del coccodrillo" da
parte dei responsabili politici e della stampa occidentale sulle
attivita' terroristiche dei mujaheddin nella regione. CNJ]
---
IL DOCUMENTO
La pista integralista tra Egitto e Kosovo
“Vendicheremo i nostri fratelli arrestati”
In un comunicato diffuso al Cairo, la “Jihad” egiziana (la seconda
maggiore organizzazione islamica armata in Egitto, dopo la “Jamaa
Islamiya”) minacciava rappresaglie contro “gli americani” per arresti
di integralisti compiuti in Albania e per la successiva estradizione in
Egitto. Potrebbe essere questa una delle firme dietro le stragi. “Il
governo americano – è scritto nel comunicato che era stato pubblicato
dal quotidiano Al Hayat –
con quello egiziano, ha arrestato tre nostri fratelli in Paesi
dell’Europa dell’Est. L’accusa è di appartenere ad un gruppo che
annuncia la guerra santa contro Usa e Israele, i loro commerci e la
loro cooperazione con i mujaheddin del Kosovo. Noi informiamo gli
americani che i loro messaggi ci sono arrivati e che la risposta è in
corso di preparazione e chiediamo loro di leggerla bene perché la
scriveremo nell’unica lingua che essi capiscono.”
Forse l’annuncio, neppure troppo velato, degli attentati di ieri.
Corriere della sera, 8-8-98 pag. 2
=== ENGLISH ===
http://www.ptd.net/webnews/wed/di/Qbosnia-egypt-attacks.RR-x_Da1.html
Suspected Egyptian Islamic extremist arrested in Bosnia
SARAJEVO, Aug 1 (AFP) - Bosnian police have arrested
an Egyptian national suspected of belonging to the
banned Islamic extremist group Jamaa Islamiya, a
border official said on Friday.
Travelling with his wife and three children, the
suspect, identified only as J.A., was arrested
Wednesday at the country's northern border with
Croatia as he attempted to leave Bosnia with a forged
Belgian passport, the official said.
"There are indications that he is a member of the Al
Gama at Al Islamiya, terrorist organisation," another
name for the banned Jamaa Islamiya extremist group,
Slavisa Vukovic, deputy head of the border police
service, told AFP.
The entire family has been detained in the border town
of Orasje, where the couple is expected to be charged
for the possession of the forged passport.
The prosecutor will also investigate the man's
suspected membership of the armed Jamaa Islamiya
group, which waged a series of attacks in Egypt in the
1980s and 1990s, Vukovic added.
Vukovic added that the man had held Bosnian
citizenship in the past but that it was revoked in
late 2001 during a crackdown on suspected terrorists
following the September 11 attacks on the United
States.
Bosnia came under close scrutiny in the aftermath of
September 11, as hundreds of foreign Muslim volunteers
had fought alongside Muslim-led troops during the
country's 1992-95 war.
Bosnian authorities arrested several people suspected
of terrorist links and deported them to the US
military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Jamaa Islamiya, one of the main armed Islamic groups
operating in Egypt, was responsible for the 1997
attack in Luxor, southern Egypt, which killed 58
German tourists and four Egyptians.
The group announced a formal end in 1999 to its
violent campaign, launched along with other groups, to
topple Egypt's secular regime, that left some 1, 300
people dead, including scores of tourists.
---
http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/aug2003-daily/01-08-2003/world/w6.htm
Al-Qaeda may hijack aircraft in Croatia: American officials
ROME: US officials have warned Italy that al-Qaeda
activists using Italian passports may try to hijack a
plane in Croatia and crash it into American interests
in the region, a newspaper reported on Thursday.
Corriere della Sera said the warning was part of an
intelligence document the United States has given to
Italy.
Earlier this week, the US Department of Homeland
Security said that five-man al-Qaeda teams might be
planning to hijack and crash more airplanes, similar
to the Sept. 11 attacks.
The warning suggested the attack could take place by
the end of the summer in cities in the East Coast, in
the United Kingdom, Italy and Australia. Corriere
della Sera said the document was handed to Italy days
ago.
Interior Ministry officials said there was no
immediate comment on the Corriere report. Interior
Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said Wednesday that there
were no specific signals of a threat concerning
Italian targets.
According to Corriere, the document says that alleged
cells operating in Italy might have a logistical role
in planning the attack. It says Italian investigators
were looking into possible involvement in the plot of
dozens of suspects arrested here.
The suspects have been arrested as part of separate
investigations in Milan and elsewhere in Italy over
the past years.
They are alleged to have links with al-Qaeda. Many
were accused of having a logistical role, such as
faking documents for al-Qaeda recruits passing through
Italy.
According to Corriere della Sera, the US document says
that alleged cells operating in Kuwait, Bahrain and
other countries in the Gulf region have had
connections with a network coordinated by Abu Musaab
al-Zarkawi, a man believed to be a bin Laden's
lieutenant.
In a February speech before the UN Security Council
mapping out the US case against Iraq, US Secretary of
State Colin Powell said al-Zarqawi's network had
plotted terrorist attacks in several European
countries, including Italy.
US officials have said al-Zarqawi fled Afghanistan
after the US military campaign there began late 2001.
---
http://www.balkanpeace.org/hed/archive/jul03/hed5908.shtml
THE CENTRE FOR PEACE IN THE BALKANS
The Sunday Times (UK), July 20, 2003
Web sting links Hamza to terror camps
An Insight Investigation
A SOPHISTICATED internet sting has provided fresh evidence linking Abu
Hamza, the British radical Islamic cleric, to terror camps, claim
anti-terrorist police.
Hamza is said to have been so convinced by a British undercover
investigator posing as an extremist website operator that he allegedly
sent him several secret propaganda films designed to attract new
recruits. The videos were used, say investigators, to convince British
Muslims to undergo jihad training at camps in Afghanistan and Bosnia.
The tapes and e-mails were obtained by Glen Jenvey, a 38-year-old
freelance counterintelligence investigator from Wiltshire, over a
period of more than a year. As the evidence flowed in, Jenvey forwarded
it to the FBI, which is now building a case to extradite Hamza to
America.
Last week Scotland Yard confirmed that anti-terrorist branch officers
had taken a statement from Jenvey and sent a copy to the FBI.
The evidence is being marshalled by US government prosecutors in New
York, where Hamza is part of a grand jury investigation into a plot to
provide weapons training to American mujaheddin on a cattle ranch in
Bly, Oregon.
If the grand jury charges Hamza with conspiracy to provide material
support to terrorists, which carries a 25-year jail sentence, sources
close to the case say they will press for his extradition to America.
According to statements given to the anti-terrorist branch in March,
Jenvey set up an internet site called islamic-news.co.uk in 2002 using
the fictitious name Pervez Khan. He published news items on the site
from Kashmiri extremist groups and other hardline Islamic propaganda.
Once established, he sent the material to Hamza's website
supportersofshariah.org, which is now shut down. He was so pleased with
this he decided to put a link to my site from his site. That was his
first big mistake, said Jenvey last week.
As a consequence, Jenvey was able to monitor everyone who logged on to
Hamza's website, a facility he passed on to the FBI so that it could
also monitor Hamza's activities.
He then decided to take the operation a step further. By now I was
getting close to Hamza. He trusted me, said Jenvey. We had been
e-mailing each other a lot and I had been passing the e-mails to the
FBI. We also started to speak on the phone.
I started to suggest I could help him recruit people for his jihad. He
became very excited by this. He would burble prayers down the phone in
an almost demented fashion. I thought he must be a bit mad.
He said he would send me some material to help me win supporters and
prepare them for jihad. He said he had some special tapes but that they
were somewhere secret and he did not keep them in the mosque. He said
they would be sent to me.
Less than a month later a package arrived at Jenvey's home. Inside were
20 audio tapes. A second package arrived a week later with six two-hour
video tapes. Jenvey was shocked by what he saw. One tape starts by
showing a training camp in Bosnia and scenes of urban combat training.
Jihad anthems play in the background and a voice in English says: Make
ready to continue to terrorise the enemy of Allah.
The tape later cuts to Hamza speaking to a private audience in London
about so-called suicide bombers. He appears to use the Koran to justify
the tactic. It is to inflict suffering, it is in the time, in the
methodology of suicide, it is there and at its peak, says Hamza.
In another tape, three British volunteers are interviewed in Bosnia
about their experiences. All three urge Muslims at home to undergo
jihad training and criticise those who are content to merely donate
money or lend moral support.
The first volunteer identifies himself as being from north London. He
says he is a third-year medical student at Birmingham University.
Hiding his face behind a black scarf, he holds an assault rifle aloft
as he speaks to the camera and talks about the satisfaction of seeing
hundreds of dead bodies in Bosnia.
Another tape opens with scenes of what appears to be a massacre of
Serbian civilians in a village in Bosnia. The camera roves around the
scene, focusing on corpses that litter the ground. Some of the bodies
are being taken away on stretchers by distraught relatives. A jihad
anthem plays in the background.
Another tape, allegedly provided by Hamza, is a documentary in Arabic
about the building of the World Trade Center in New York and the
Petronas Towers in Malaysia. It was made prior to September 11.
Jenvey continued to monitor Hamza's website. In April this year he
noticed a film showing Russian soldiers being blown up by Chechnyan
terrorists.
The rest off the film was available through a link from Hamza's
website. It showed training with live ammunition at a camp in
Afghanistan and appears to be an exercise for would-be assassins. Some
of the target images projected on to a screen are of western
politicians. Many of the faces are obscured, but Bill Clinton, the
former US president, is clearly recognisable.
Shortly after Jenvey reported this Hamza's website was shut down by the
internet service provider.
One tape given to Jenvey has already made an impact. It shows Hamza at
a meeting sharing a platform with the US terrorist suspect James Ujaama.
Ujaama designed Hamza's internet site under the name Abu Samaya, but
denied knowing Hamza when first arrested by the FBI. However, his
defence crumbled when the tape was produced. He is now the key witness
against Hamza in the grand jury investigation.
According to court papers, Hamza provided letters of introduction or
sponsorship for people to enter Al-Qaeda camps. The documents say he
sent two emissaries to help Ujaama set up the Bly training camp.
Despite his activities, Hamza is still at liberty in Britain, although
his assets have been frozen and his disability benefits stopped. The
Home Office is trying to strip him of his British citizenship in order
to deport him. The cleric preached at the North London mosque in
Finsbury Park before it was closed down following a police raid in
January.
A senior legal source involved in Hamza's case said: Either they will
strip him of his citizenship and then detain him under new immigration
laws so he rots in prison or they will extradite him to America.
A spokesman for Hamza denied he played any role in terror.
Supportersofshariah.org had many affiliate websites to whom we would
send videos, he said. Abu Hamza's tapes were on sale openly at Finsbury
Park mosque. The grand jury investigation in America is a joke and a
kangaroo court. They have put pressure on Ujaama to say these things.
---
IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, No. 402, January 31, 2003
BOSNIA: SFOR FREES SUSPECTED EXTREMIST
The NATO-led peacekeepers' decision to release a Muslim accused of
links to al-Qaeda may not be enough to ease fears of human rights
abuses.
By Nermina Durmic-Kahrovic in Maoca
NATO-led peacekeeping troops have released a suspected Islamic
extremist they had been holding for three months without charge.
Sabahudin Fiuljanin was handed over to the local authorities on January
30 after an outcry over the circumstances of his detention.
Amnesty International, the Bosnian government and the country's top
human rights court had claimed that NATO's Stabilisation Force, SFOR,
had flouted the 1995 Dayton peace agreement - which states that troops
should maintain stability but not overrule local law - and that the its
anti-terror campaign had led to a number of civil liberties abuses.
Bosnian law allows a suspect to be held without charge for 30 days -
but Fiuljanin had been detained for three times that period. He was
allowed to see a lawyer only twice, and was denied family visits
throughout his incarceration.
Fiuljanin, a resident of Maoca, was arrested on suspicion of spying and
accused of links to al-Qaeda in November, when he was allegedly
discovered in front of an SFOR base in Tuzla with anti-tank weapons in
his car.
Amnesty International spoke out strongly against SFOR's decision to
hold him without charge after the 30-day limit, stating, "The
obligation to respect human rights applies to all members of
international and inter-governmental organisations exercising law
enforcement functions - including NATO."
Bosnia's Human Rights Chamber demanded on January 11 that SFOR hand
over Fijuljanin to the Bosnian authorities, claiming that local and
international law had been violated. The country's tripartite
presidency made a similar call.
SFOR had refused to comply with these requests, but freed their
prisoner on the grounds that the local authorities could now take over
the investigation.
Following Fiuljanin's release, his lawyer Osman Mulahalilovic told the
media that his client had handed in all his weapons in October
following an amnesty.
While Fiuljanin was expected to give a statement to the local police,
it is uncertain if further charges will be pressed against him. SFOR
spokesman Major Shawn Mill told journalists at a press conference on
January 30 that there was an "on going investigation" into the
Fiuljanin case, and that they still considered the suspect to be an
"extremist".
His arrest had sparked a series of SFOR patrols and house searches in
Bosnia, as part of a crackdown on suspected extremists. This pressure
allegedly forced around ten Maoca families to flee their homes earlier
this month.
"Those families had to leave in the midst of such a harsh winter,"
complained Sulejman Osojkic, a member of the dwindling Muslim community.
"They [SFOR] claim that they are for democracy and human rights, and
call us extremists. Why - am I an enemy of SFOR?"
While the Maoca community includes a number of radical Muslims who
fought during the war in Bosnia, they deny all links with Osama bin
Laden's al-Qaeda network. Locally, they are known as Vehabije - a name
given to those who follow puritanical interpretations of Islam.
Police and other local officials in the Tuzla canton - which has
jurisdiction in the area - have repeatedly said that the community did
not pose a threat.
"So far we have not had any incidents or complaints about members of
this group from their neighbours, nor people of different nationalities
who live with them. There are no indications that they represent a
special danger to the safety of the area or the community they belong
to," Tuzla police commissioner Ivica Divkovic told IWPR.
He said the Maoca community was made up of Bosnian citizens and Muslims
from neighbouring Yugoslavia. Locals say there are around 20 such
families still living in the area.
SFOR spokesman Major John Dowling explained that the increased SFOR
activity was part of Operation Harvest, which was designed to collect
illegally stashed weapons from the war, and had nothing to do with
targeting Muslim radicals.
He added that the NATO-led force had received no complaints from any of
the locals, and insisted that its activities had been misinterpreted.
"SFOR treats all people equally - we have no preference for any
ethnicity, religion or nationality," he said.
But Admir Mujkanovic, president of the municipality that includes
Maoca, told IWPR he had warned SFOR a few months ago that residents
were being upset by the frequent patrols and late night helicopter
flights. "They told me this would not happen again, but that has
remained just a promise," he said.
Nermina Durmic Kahrovic is a regular IWPR contributor
(...) Balkan Crisis Report is supported by the Department for
International Development, the European Commission, the Swedish
International Development and Cooperation Agency, The Netherlands
Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and other funders. IWPR also acknowledges
general support from the Ford Foundation. For further details on this
project, other information services and media programmes, visit IWPR's
website: www.iwpr.net (...)
---
9-11: The Balkans & Prior Warning
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2002/12-30-2002/insider/
vo18no26_warning.htm
The New American
Vol. 18, No. 26 - December 30, 2002
9-11: The Balkans & Prior Warning
Saudi nationals Tareq and Yaser al-Jahini are among the 345 people
sought by the FBI in connection with Black Tuesday. According to the
November 11th Portland Oregonian, Tareq came under FBI scrutiny more
than three years before the 9-11 atrocity. At the time, he was studying
aircraft maintenance at Portland Community College, with the supposed
objective of becoming a mechanic at Saudi Arabian Airlines. "But as FBI
agents traced his movements ? they found some connections that
suggested other possible motives for his interest in aviation," notes
the paper.
Tareq?s brother Yaser was among the Muslim mujahedin fighters who
"visited Bosnia in the early 1990s to help local Muslims wage war on
the Serbs," continues the Oregonian. "The government also thinks he
told a known al-Qaeda operative he would identify potential terrorism
targets while in the Southwest...." Tareq was also connected to people
accused of terrorist acts in the Middle East. In a memo written in
early 2001, Phoenix FBI counter-terrorism agent Kenneth Williams
connected the al-Jahini brothers with "nine other instances of Middle
Eastern students enrolled in aviation courses" in America. One Muslim
aviation security student "had tried to enter a commercial airline
cockpit in 1999, later saying he thought it was a bathroom," relates
the paper.
According to an intelligence summary prepared by congressional
researcher Eleanor Hill, Agent Williams concluded that "Islamic
extremists, studying everything from aviation security to flying, could
be learning how to hijack or destroy aircraft and to evade airport
security." His detailed warnings, tragically, were ignored.
FBI agents in Pakistan are pulling on another Balkans-connected
al-Qaeda thread trying to locate Osama bin Laden. Dr. Amer Aziz, a
British-educated Pakistani physician, "was abducted by Pakistani
intelligence agents near his home ? and handed over to U.S.
interrogators seeking information on surviving ?inner circle? members
of the terrorist network?s command structure," reported the November
15th Herald of London. Dr. Aziz is believed to be the physician who
treated bin Laden?s kidney ailment two years ago, and the FBI suspects
he treated the terrorist for bomb splinters after he fled from
Afghanistan last December.
During the mid-1990s, reports the Herald, Dr. Aziz "volunteered to help
Muslims in Kosovo," where the bin Laden-supported narco-Marxist Kosovo
Liberation Army was seeking to tear away that Serbian province as part
of a scheme to create a "Greater Albania." With the help of the UN,
NATO, and the Clinton administration, bin Laden?s Balkan allies now
control both Kosovo and large parts of Bosnia - a handy platform for
launching terrorist assaults on Europe.
---
AFP Bosnian, US officials meet on Algerians sent to Guantanamo
SARAJEVO, Oct 19 (AFP) - Bosnian and US officials have held talks about
the status of four Algerians who were handed over by the government to
the US authorities early this year, and have since been held without
charge in the US military base at Guantanamo, Cuba, the Bosnian foreign
ministry said on
Saturday.
The talks follow a Bosnian judicial ruling which said the Algerians,
suspected by the United States of terrorism, should not have been
handed over.
Bosnian officials met US ambassador Clifford Bond on Friday and
informed him that the October 11 ruling by the Bosnian Human Rights
Chamber required the authorities to use diplomatic channels in order to
protect the human rights of the four and provide them with consular
support, a ministry
statement said.
The statement said the ambassador would notify Washington so that the
"possibilities of cooperation between Bosnia-Herzegovina and the United
States on implementing the ruling of the Human Rights Chamber could be
considered."
The chamber had ruled that by handing the prisoners over
Bosnia-Hercegovina and its Muslim-Croat federation had violated several
articles of the European Human Rights Convention -- including
expulsion, illegal detention and handing over people to jurisdictions
in which they risk the death penalty.
The provisions of the Convention have been enshrined in Bosnia's
constitution.
As a result of the ruling the chamber ordered the Bosnian authorities
to seek assurances from Washington that the four suspects would not be
subjected to the death penalty.
The Bosnian authorities were also obliged to engage lawyers to protect
the rights of the four while in US custody, and in the case of possible
military criminal or other proceedings against them.
The four -- Hadz Boudellaa, Boumediene Lakhdar, Mohamed Nechle and
Saber Lahmar -- were detained in Bosnia last year along with two other
people of Arab origin on suspicion of links to international terrorism.
Five of the six suspects had Bosnian citizenship, but the government
revoked it after their detention.
The Human Rights Chamber was established under the Dayton peace accord
that ended Bosnia's 1992-95 war, leaving the country split into two
highly independent entities -- the Serbs' Republika Srpska and the
Muslim-Croat Federation.
Despite a decision by the Muslim-Croat supreme court to release the
six, they were handed over to the United States in January, and are
currently held at the Guantanamo facility, where suspected members of
the al-Qaeda and Taliban Islamic extremist groups captured in
Afghanistan are being kept.
The United States has refused to consider the detainees as prisoners of
war, and is holding them without trial and without granting them access
to lawyers.
---
http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/apr2002-daily/03-04-2002/world/w12.htm
April 3, 2002
Nato worried about terrorists in Bosnia
SARAJEVO: International terrorist organisations such
as Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network often travel
through Bosnia and have associates in the Balkan
country, the commander of the Nato force here said
Tuesday.
But US General John Sylvester, commander of the
Nato-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR), said it remained
unclear whether they were planning attacks in Bosnia
or using the country as a safe haven. "There are, of
course, a number of international terrorist
organisations, and individuals who are within those
organisations, who periodically transit
Bosnia-Hercegovina," Sylvester said.
"In fact, there are international terrorist
organisations which have individuals within
Bosnia-Hercegovina," he added. "What we have to
determine is whether or not the individuals involved
are here for the purpose of planning operations or are
here for the purpose of something else, being
supported, being provided documentation, seeking
respite or whatever," Sylvester said.
Asked whether al-Qaeda was present in Bosnia, he said:
"Sure, it is a transnational terrorist organisation
and there certainly have been members of al-Qaeda
here." Last October Nato said it disrupted an al-Qaeda
cell in Bosnia after a group of six Arabs were
arrested by Bosnian police on suspicion of planning an
attack on the US embassy in Sarajevo.
---
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2002/03-25-2002/insider/
vo18no06_kosovo.htm
THE NEW AMERICAN, Vol. 18, No. 06, March 25, 2002
Bosnia: Hub of Terrorist Axis?
In a series of reports beginning in 1996, The New American warned that
Bosnia, the UN-administered former Yugoslav province, had become a
staging area for Muslim terrorist groups. Following the Black Tuesday
attacks, we reviewed those prior warnings and pointed out that both
Bosnia and Kosovo had become UN-protected "safe havens" for Osama bin
Laden's al-Qaeda network (see "Behind the Terror Network" in our
November 5, 2001 issue). A February 21st AP report from Sarajevo
confirms those warnings.
Last October, NATO troops raided the offices of the Saudi High
Commissioner for Aid to Bosnia, a "charity" created by Saudi Prince
Selman bin Abdul-Aziz allegedly to aid Bosnian Muslim war orphans.
Among the materials seized during the raid were "photos of targets of
past terror attacks - the World Trade Center, the Pentagon,... the
U.S.S. Cole,... and the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.... The
pictures showed the targets both before and after the attacks."
NATO troops captured six suspected collaborators in the Black Tuesday
attack, including Bensayah Belkacem, "who U.S. officials allege served
as Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant in Europe." Also netted in the raid
were items suggesting terrorist attacks yet to come: Street maps of
Washington, D.C., on which government buildings had been marked; a
computer program
explaining how to use crop duster aircrafts to spread pesticide; and
"materials used to make fake State Department identification badges and
credit cards...."
"The raid of the agency coincided with the arrests last October of six
Algerian-born men, including one, Sabir Lamar, who had worked for the
Saudi organization," continued the AP report. "All six were handed over
last month to U.S. authorities, who have said they had evidence
implicating the suspects in planned post-Sept. 11 attacks on Western
targets. Lamar was the son-in-law of a local employee of the U.S.
Embassy in Sarajevo who had the keys to the building...."
NATO's intervention made it possible for the radical Muslim terrorist
network to gain its European beachhead in the Balkans. NATO is a
regional affiliate of the UN, which supposedly provides the authority
for the war against terrorism.
----- Original Message -----
From: Predrag Tosic
To: Questo indirizzo email è protetto dagli spambots. È necessario abilitare JavaScript per vederlo.
Sent: Sunday, March 24, 2002 6:53 AM
Subject: [yugoslaviainfo] Al-Qaida Plot Revealed In Sarajevo (AP report)
Al-Qaida Plot Revealed in Sarajevo
By Alexandar S. Dragicevic
Associated Press Writer
Saturday, March 23, 2002; 7:05 AM
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina
Al-Qaida terrorists planned a devastating attack on Americans in
Sarajevo after meeting in Bulgaria to identify European
targets, a high-ranking Bosnian official said Saturday.
The official, who insisted on anonymity, told The
Associated Press that intelligence reports on the
meeting in Sofia prompted a special government session
Thursday night in which threats against the U.S.
Embassy and other European embassies were discussed.
The countries of the other embassies were not disclosed.
At the Sofia meeting, members of al-Qaida decided
that, "in Sarajevo something will happen to Americans
similar to New York last September," said the
official. "The report did not specify when the
al-Qaida meeting was held or who attended.
The U.S. Embassy in Bosnia on Wednesday shut down to
the public after receiving word of a possible
terrorist threat. The embassy closed entirely on Friday.
U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Karen Williams declined to
comment on the situation Saturday. Bosnian special
police forces were seen around the compound, along
with normal U.S. security units.
In Sofia, Bulgaria's Foreign Ministry said it had
received no information on such a meeting, either
"from Bosnian authorities or from any other official
sources." It promised an investigation if "this
information proves to be serious."
On Tuesday, just a day before the U.S. Embassy
received the threats, Bosnian police raided an Islamic
charity, Bosnian Ideal Future, also known as
Benevolentia International Foundation, seizing
weapons, plans for making bombs, booby-traps and bogus
passports.
On Friday, police announced they had arrested Munib
Zahiragic, a Bosnian citizen and the head of the
Bosnian chapter of the charity. Zahiragic is also a
former member of the Bosnian Muslim secret police, AID.
Zahiragic was arrested on charges of espionage, which
carries a maximum 10 years in prison. No details on
whom he was supposed to be spying for were released.
As a part of the war on terrorism, Bosnia's government
in January ordered an investigation into the work of
foreign humanitarian agencies. Two weeks ago,
investigators reported funds were missing from three
Islamic charities, among them Benevolentia.
The United States recently froze the assets of
Benevolentia, with head offices in Illinois and New Jersey.
The U.S. and British embassies were closed for several
days in October due to terrorist threats. They
reopened after local police arrested six naturalized
Bosnians, all of them Algerian natives, suspected of
plotting post-Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. interests in
Bosnia and elsewhere.
The suspects were handed over to U.S. authorities in
January, and now are being held at the U.S. military
base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Five of the six were
employed as humanitarian aid workers; one was
suspected of being Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant
for Europe.
More than 1 million Muslims live in Bosnia, most of
them native to the country but also including dozens
of former Islamic fighters, or mujahedeen, who came
mostly from the Middle East to fight on the Muslim
side in the 1992-1995 war against the country's Serbs
and Croats.
---
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?f=/stories/20020315/
344843.html
March 15, 2002
U.S. supported al-Qaeda cells during Balkan Wars
Fought Serbian troops
Isabel Vincent, National Post
Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network has been
active in the Balkans for years, most recently helping
Kosovo rebels battle for independence from Serbia with
the financial and military backing of the United
States and NATO.
The claim that al-Qaeda played a role in the Balkan
wars of the 1990s came from an alleged FBI document
former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic presented in
his defence before the Hague tribunal last week. Mr.
Milosevic faces 66 counts of war crimes and genocide.
Although Hague prosecutors have challenged the
veracity of the document, which Mr. Milosevic
identified as a Congressional statement from the FBI
dated last December, Balkan experts say the presence
of al-Qaeda militants in Kosovo and Bosnia is well
documented.
Today, al-Qaeda members are helping the National
Liberation Army, a rebel group in Macedonia, fight the
Skopje government in a bid for independence, military
analysts say. Last week, Michael Steiner, the United
Nations administrator in Kosovo, warned of "importing
the Afghan danger to Europe" because several cells
trained and financed by al-Qaeda remain in the region.
"Many members of the Kosovo Liberation Army were sent
for training in terrorist camps in Afghanistan," said
James Bissett, former Canadian ambassador to
Yugoslavia and an expert on the Balkans. "Milosevic is
right. There is no question of their participation in
conflicts in the Balkans. It is very well documented."
The arrival in the Balkans of the so-called Afghan
Arabs, who are from various Middle Eastern states and
linked to al-Qaeda, began in 1992 soon after the war
in Bosnia. According to Lenard Cohen, professor of
political science at Simon Fraser University,
mujahedeen fighters who travelled to Afghanistan to
resist the Soviet occupation in the 1980s later
"migrated to Bosnia hoping to assist their Islamic
brethren in a struggle against Serbian [and for a
time] Croatian forces."
The Bosnian Muslims welcomed their assistance. After
the Bosnian war, "hundreds of Bosnian passports were
provided to the mujahedeen by the Muslim-controlled
government in Sarajevo," said Prof. Cohen in a recent
article titled Bin Laden and the war in the Balkans.
Many al-Qaeda members decided to stay in the region
after marrying local Muslim women, he said.
They also set up secret terrorist training camps in
Bosnia -- activities financed by the sale of opium
produced in Afghanistan and secretly shipped through
Turkey and Kosovo into central Europe.
In the years immediately before the NATO bombing of
Yugoslavia in 1999, the al-Qaeda militants moved into
Kosovo, the southern province of Serbia, to help
ethnic Albanian extremists of the KLA mount their
terrorist campaign against Serb targets in the region.
The mujahedeen "were financed by Saudi and United Arab
Emirates money," said one Western military official,
asking anonymity. "They were mercenaries who were not
running the show in Kosovo, but were used by the KLA
to do their dirty work."
The United States, which had originally trained the
Afghan Arabs during the war in Afghanistan, supported
them in Bosnia and then in Kosovo. When NATO forces
launched their military campaign against Yugoslavia
three years ago to unseat Mr. Milosevic, they entered
the Kosovo conflict on the side of the KLA, which had
already received "substantial" military and financial
support from bin Laden's network, analysts say.
In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes on the
United States, NATO began to worry about the presence
in the Balkans of the Islamist terrorist cells it had
supported throughout the 1990s.
ivencent@...
---
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/bosnia020117.html
ABC News, January 17, 2002
Formenting Fundamentalism
Bosnia: A New Playground for Militant Islamists?
By Dada Jovanovic
S A R A J E V O, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Jan. 17
— In his jeans, warm gray coat, funky round glasses
and with his ever-present mobile phone, Faruk Visca
greets visitors in the Bosnian capital with a warm
smile and a handshake.
Unless they're women. Female visitors have to do
without a handshake.
As a "Muslim brother," Visca, 22, refuses to shake
women's hands. He is a follower of Hassan al Banna,
who founded the radical Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in
1928. It is considered the Arab world's oldest
fundamentalist Muslim group.
Once a part of communist-controlled Yugoslavia,
Bosnia-Herzegovina had little contact or sympathy for
pan-Islamism. But in the ethnic war between 1992 and
1995, hundreds of Muslims from around the Arab world
helped their Slavic fellow Muslims fight against
Bosnian Serbs and Croats.
Six years after the Bosnian conflict, many foreign
fighters — or mujahids, as they call themselves — have
settled in the Eastern European country, and Bosnian
authorities warn that militant Islam is on the rise in
the Muslim-dominated country.
In October, Bosnian police arrested five Algerians and
a naturalized Bosnian citizen of Algerian or Yemeni
origin on suspicion of having ties to Osama bin
Laden's al Qaeda network.
A Bosnian court today ordered the release of the six
men, who were arrested by local police acting on a
U.S. tip after threats closed the U.S. and British
embassies in Sarajevo for five days in mid-October.
Their release order came amid local reports that the
men would be transferred to the custody of the U.S.
government and transferred to a U.S. detention
facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Under local law, the
men could not be held beyond three months, a period
that would have ended Friday. But in recent weeks,
Bosnian media have speculated the United States did
not provide hard evidence to charge the men, and human
rights groups have been urging their release.
Posters Met With Arrest
Visca has been concerned about the crackdown on
hard-line Muslims in Bosnia since the Sept. 11
attacks. Following the start of the U.S. military
campaign in Afghanistan, Visca and like-minded friends
started pasting posters across Sarajevo.
"Millions of dead and wounded, millions of widows and
orphans, hundreds of cities and villages destroyed,"
said one poster.
In bigger type, it lists the regions where Visca and
his friends believe Muslims are being victimized:
"Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, Chechnya, Kashmir,
Bosnia?"
And finally, the crucial question: "Do Muslim lives
deserve a minute of silence? It should be centuries."
The posters got him arrested and he was detained for
24 hours. Local authorities in Sarajevo closed a bank
account of an association he had officially registered
under the name of "Islam Bosnia."
A Devout Muslim
The son of an engineer, Visca comes from a typical
middle-class family. His mother is highly educated and
his younger sister likes wearing miniskirts and going
to rock concerts. They think Visca's behavior is
unusual.
His Islamic education came from his grandfather, who
lived in Germany and was an avid reader of the works
of author Alija Izetbegovic, a veteran Bosnian Muslim
politician who became the first president of an
independent Bosnia.
Visca embraced his grandfather's interest in Islam but
went further. A devout Muslim, he prays five times a
day. He also follows the teachings of Muslim
Brotherhood founder al Banna, who is also been known
to have inspired many of the Taliban and al Qaeda
soldiers in Afghanistan.
Visca says he is dismayed at the indifference some of
his fellow Muslims have toward Islam. He says local
Muslims fought bravely against Serbs and Croats during
the war, but he is concerned because they also like to
"drink, sing and whistle at women in Sarajevo."
He believes the Bosnian Muslims who went to
Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban are saving
the honor of Islam. "They don't need a bottle of
slivovitz (a local alcohol) to go and fight
courageously." He says he is pleased that their wives,
who stayed behind, respect Islamic rules and cover
their heads with scarves or veils.
Afghanistan's ousted hard-line Taliban wins his
sympathy. "All they wanted is proof against [Osama]
bin Laden, but [the] Americans never gave them
anything," he says.
But he has serious problems with bin Laden's methods.
"Why bomb the American embassies?" he asks,
referencing to the deadly bombings of U.S. embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. The United States
blames bin Laden for those attacks.
Growing Saudi Influence
Like bin Laden, Visca dislikes the government of Saudi
Arabia for its close relationship with the United
States. He particularly dislikes Saudi Crown Prince
Abdullah. "He is a valet of America who thinks he is a
pharaoh," Visca scoffs.
Saudi Arabia has paid for the construction of a huge
new mosque in Sarajevo built of concrete and marble,
which has been the subject of much controversy in the
Bosnian capital.
The King Fahd Ibn Adellaziz Mosque, which cost an
estimated $10 million to build, was named for the
Saudi king. It was opened in September 2000 by a Saudi
prince and can accommodate some 5,000 faithful.
While some Bosnians look upon the mosque as a symbol
of growing Saudi influence and have publicly said the
cash could have gone into developmental projects
instead, many Bosnian Muslims worship at the mosque
and avail themselves of the services of an affiliated
adjacent cultural center and orphanage.
But despite his opposition to the Saudi royal family,
Visca greets a lot of his friends at the mosque.
Paradise and Hell
Bosnian Deputy Foreign Minister Ivica Misic has
concerns over the influence of the mosque. He says
anti-Semitism is rampant on an Web site affiliated
with the Islamic center and that poor local women were
paid to wear burqas, the all-enveloping cloak that is
mandatory for Saudi women.
Visitors to the mosque are believed to be monitored by
local authorities in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Information is then reportedly passed to international
agencies, including the CIA.
After Sept. 11, Bosnian authorities reviewed the files
of all foreigners who had been awarded Bosnian
citizenship after the war.
"We stripped off Bosnian citizenship from 94 of them,
but only 17 were located. All others had fake
addresses," Misic said.
Bosnian authorities know their country could become a
magnet for extremist Muslims. But Bosnian Interior
Minister Muhamed Besic is determined to stop that from
happening. "They think Bosnia is paradise for them,
but I tell them it will be hell."
ITALIANO:
*** TERRORISMO: BOSNIA, EGIZIANO ARRESTATO FORSE MILITANTE JEMAAH (1
agosto 2003)
*** TERRORISMO: USA; SCOPERTA LISTA 20 FINANZIATORI DI OSAMA (19
febbraio 2003)
*** BOSNIA: SFOR, UOMO ARRESTATO IN OTTOBRE, LEGATO AD AL QAIDA (4
dicembre 2002)
*** La pista integralista tra Egitto e Kosovo. “Vendicheremo i nostri
fratelli arrestati” (1998 !!!)
ENGLISH:
*** Egyptian Islamic Extremist Arrested At Bosnian-Croat Border (1
August 2003)
*** Al-Qaeda may hijack aircraft in Croatia: American officials (1
August 2003)
*** Web sting links Hamza to terror camps. An Insight Investigation (20
July 2003)
*** BOSNIA: SFOR FREES SUSPECTED EXTREMIST (31 January 2003)
*** 9-11: The Balkans & Prior Warning (30 December 2002)
*** Bosnian, US officials meet on Algerians sent to Guantanamo (19
October 2002)
*** Nato worried about terrorists in Bosnia (3 April 2002)
*** Bosnia: Hub of Terrorist Axis? (25 March 2002)
*** Al-Qaida Plot Revealed in Sarajevo (23 March 2002)
*** U.S. supported al-Qaeda cells during Balkan Wars Fought Serbian
troops (15 March 2002)
*** Formenting Fundamentalism. Bosnia: A New Playground for Militant
Islamists? (17 January 2002)
=== ITALIANO ===
TERRORISMO: BOSNIA,EGIZIANO ARRESTATO FORSE MILITANTE JEMAAH
(ANSA) - SARAJEVO 1 AGO - Sarebbe un militante della Jemaah Islamyia
l'egiziano arrestato mercoledi' al valico di frontiera di Orasje, nel
nord, mentre lasciava la Bosnia con la moglie e i tre figli. Lo si e'
appreso da fonti della polizia.
Dell'uomo, che viaggiava con un falso passaporto belga a bordo di
un'automobile immatricolata in Germania, sono state diffuse solo le
iniziali del nome: J.A. Nel 2001 era stato privato della cittadinanza
bosniaca ottenuta durante la guerra (1992-1995) quando molti
volontari di paesi islamici hanno combattuto nelle fila dell'esercito
bosniaco-musulmano. Alcuni di essi hanno ottenuto la cittadinanza
sposando donne bosniache.
La Jemaa Islamyia e' un'organizzazione integralista egiziana messa
fuorilegge dal governo del Cairo. (ANSA).
VD 01/08/2003 17:19
http://www.ansa.it/balcani/bosnia/bosnia.shtml
---
TERRORISMO: USA; SCOPERTA LISTA 20 FINANZIATORI DI OSAMA
(ANSA) - NEW YORK, 19 FEB - L'intelligence americana
dispone di una lista di 20 ricchi musulmani che in varie zone del mondo
hanno finanziato e forse finanziano ancora Osama bin Laden e Al Qaida.
La lista e' stata trovata nel corso di una perquisizione negli uffici
in Bosnia di una fondazione di beneficienza islamica con sede a Chicago
e la sua esistenza e' emersa nel corso del processo al leader
dell'organizzazione. Enaam Arnaout, presidente e fondatore della
Benevolence International Foundation, un'organizzazione caritativa
attiva in tutto il mondo arabo, si e' dichiarato nei giorni scorsi a
Chicago colpevole di aver finanziato illegalmente la guerriglia in
Bosnia e Cecenia. La procura federale, in cambio della confessione, ha
ritirato le accuse contro di lui di legami con Al Qaida e ora attende
che Arnaout - che in passato ha combattuto al fianco di Osama in
Afghanistan - collabori con la giustizia nella lotta al terrorismo.
L'elenco dei 20 finanziatori e' stato sequestrato nel marzo 2002 e
fino ad ora figurava tra gli atti segreti del processo. I nominativi
dei personaggi che figurano nella lista sono ancora coperti dal
riserbo, ma fonti investigative hanno
spiegato che l'elenco e' servito in questi mesi per mettere a punto l'
offensiva americana contro le finanze di Al Qaida. In un rapporto
investigativo allegato alla lista, e' scritto che nei computer dell'
ufficio in Bosnia e' stato trovato un file intitolato 'La storia di
Osama', che conteneva ''una bozza scritta a mano con una lista di
quelli che dentro Al Qaida vengono indicati come 'la Catena Dorata',
una serie di ricchi finanziatori della causa dei mujahedin''. (ANSA).
BM 19/02/2003 16:46
http://www.ansa.it/balcani/bosnia/bosnia.shtml
---
BOSNIA: SFOR, UOMO ARRESTATO IN OTTOBRE, LEGATO AD AL QAIDA
(ANSA) - SARAJEVO, 4 DIC - La Forza di stabilizzazione della
Nato in Bosnia (Sfor) ha dichiarato che Sabahudin Fiuljanin, 32 anni,
arrestato il 26 ottobre scorso con l'accusa di spionaggio delle
installazioni e del personale di Sfor, e' legato alla rete terroristica
al Qaida. Lo hanno reso noto i media bosniaci.
Fiuljanin e' stato arrestato dalla Sfor nel nord-est della Bosnia e da
allora e' detenuto nella base americana di Orao, presso Tuzla, la
stessa che avrebbe spiato - secondo il quotidiano Oslobodjenje -
nascosto in un furgoncino.
Dei legami di Fiuljanin con al Qaida la Sfor ha informato ieri il primo
ministro e la polizia della Federazione Bh (entita' croato-musulmana di
Bosnia), ma il portavoce della Sfor Yves Venier non ha fornito altri
dettagli ''per non compromettere l'inchiesta in corso''.
Secondo la stampa di Sarajevo, che si richiama a fonti della
Sfor, Fiuljanin e' originario del Sangiaccato, regione della Jugoslavia
(Serbia e Montenegro) con una forte presenza musulmana, ma e'
naturalizzato bosniaco dopo aver combattuto durante la guerra (1992-95)
nell'unita' El-Mujahid
che aveva tra le file numerosi mujaheddin provenienti da Paesi islamici.
Fiuljanin, che e' sposato con una bosniaca ed ha quattro figli, ha
abitato nel villaggio di Bocinja, in Bosnia centrale, dove si erano
installate diverse famiglie degli ex-mujaheddin, rimasti in Bosnia dopo
il conflitto, e sfrattate due anni fa per permettere il ritorno dei
profughi serbi. Da Bocinja, con alcune altre famiglie, Fiuljanin si e'
trasferito in un villaggio isolato, Gornja Maoca, nella zona a nord di
Tuzla.
Nella sua casa, perquisita dopo il suo arresto, sono stati trovati una
pistola, un lanciarazzi anticarro e tre passaporti, di cui due bosniaci
e uno jugoslavo.
Secondo i giornali, la Sfor avrebbe anche trovato a bordo del
furgoncino di Fiuljanin una lettera d'addio, datata novembre dell'anno
scorso, come quelle che scrivono i kamikaze. (ANSA). COR*VD 04/12/2002
15:01
http://www.ansa.it/balcani/bosnia/bosnia.shtml
[NOTA: Come si puo' leggere piu' sotto, nell'articolo in lingua inglese
datato 31 gennaio 2003, il signor Fiuljanin e' stato prontamente
consegnato dalla SFOR alle autorita' di Sarajevo. D'altronde, sia la
NATO che il regime di Sarajevo sono state complici del terrorismo
islamista in Bosnia in funzione antijugoslava. Suona percio'
profondamente squallido questo tardivo "pianto del coccodrillo" da
parte dei responsabili politici e della stampa occidentale sulle
attivita' terroristiche dei mujaheddin nella regione. CNJ]
---
IL DOCUMENTO
La pista integralista tra Egitto e Kosovo
“Vendicheremo i nostri fratelli arrestati”
In un comunicato diffuso al Cairo, la “Jihad” egiziana (la seconda
maggiore organizzazione islamica armata in Egitto, dopo la “Jamaa
Islamiya”) minacciava rappresaglie contro “gli americani” per arresti
di integralisti compiuti in Albania e per la successiva estradizione in
Egitto. Potrebbe essere questa una delle firme dietro le stragi. “Il
governo americano – è scritto nel comunicato che era stato pubblicato
dal quotidiano Al Hayat –
con quello egiziano, ha arrestato tre nostri fratelli in Paesi
dell’Europa dell’Est. L’accusa è di appartenere ad un gruppo che
annuncia la guerra santa contro Usa e Israele, i loro commerci e la
loro cooperazione con i mujaheddin del Kosovo. Noi informiamo gli
americani che i loro messaggi ci sono arrivati e che la risposta è in
corso di preparazione e chiediamo loro di leggerla bene perché la
scriveremo nell’unica lingua che essi capiscono.”
Forse l’annuncio, neppure troppo velato, degli attentati di ieri.
Corriere della sera, 8-8-98 pag. 2
=== ENGLISH ===
http://www.ptd.net/webnews/wed/di/Qbosnia-egypt-attacks.RR-x_Da1.html
Suspected Egyptian Islamic extremist arrested in Bosnia
SARAJEVO, Aug 1 (AFP) - Bosnian police have arrested
an Egyptian national suspected of belonging to the
banned Islamic extremist group Jamaa Islamiya, a
border official said on Friday.
Travelling with his wife and three children, the
suspect, identified only as J.A., was arrested
Wednesday at the country's northern border with
Croatia as he attempted to leave Bosnia with a forged
Belgian passport, the official said.
"There are indications that he is a member of the Al
Gama at Al Islamiya, terrorist organisation," another
name for the banned Jamaa Islamiya extremist group,
Slavisa Vukovic, deputy head of the border police
service, told AFP.
The entire family has been detained in the border town
of Orasje, where the couple is expected to be charged
for the possession of the forged passport.
The prosecutor will also investigate the man's
suspected membership of the armed Jamaa Islamiya
group, which waged a series of attacks in Egypt in the
1980s and 1990s, Vukovic added.
Vukovic added that the man had held Bosnian
citizenship in the past but that it was revoked in
late 2001 during a crackdown on suspected terrorists
following the September 11 attacks on the United
States.
Bosnia came under close scrutiny in the aftermath of
September 11, as hundreds of foreign Muslim volunteers
had fought alongside Muslim-led troops during the
country's 1992-95 war.
Bosnian authorities arrested several people suspected
of terrorist links and deported them to the US
military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Jamaa Islamiya, one of the main armed Islamic groups
operating in Egypt, was responsible for the 1997
attack in Luxor, southern Egypt, which killed 58
German tourists and four Egyptians.
The group announced a formal end in 1999 to its
violent campaign, launched along with other groups, to
topple Egypt's secular regime, that left some 1, 300
people dead, including scores of tourists.
---
http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/aug2003-daily/01-08-2003/world/w6.htm
Al-Qaeda may hijack aircraft in Croatia: American officials
ROME: US officials have warned Italy that al-Qaeda
activists using Italian passports may try to hijack a
plane in Croatia and crash it into American interests
in the region, a newspaper reported on Thursday.
Corriere della Sera said the warning was part of an
intelligence document the United States has given to
Italy.
Earlier this week, the US Department of Homeland
Security said that five-man al-Qaeda teams might be
planning to hijack and crash more airplanes, similar
to the Sept. 11 attacks.
The warning suggested the attack could take place by
the end of the summer in cities in the East Coast, in
the United Kingdom, Italy and Australia. Corriere
della Sera said the document was handed to Italy days
ago.
Interior Ministry officials said there was no
immediate comment on the Corriere report. Interior
Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said Wednesday that there
were no specific signals of a threat concerning
Italian targets.
According to Corriere, the document says that alleged
cells operating in Italy might have a logistical role
in planning the attack. It says Italian investigators
were looking into possible involvement in the plot of
dozens of suspects arrested here.
The suspects have been arrested as part of separate
investigations in Milan and elsewhere in Italy over
the past years.
They are alleged to have links with al-Qaeda. Many
were accused of having a logistical role, such as
faking documents for al-Qaeda recruits passing through
Italy.
According to Corriere della Sera, the US document says
that alleged cells operating in Kuwait, Bahrain and
other countries in the Gulf region have had
connections with a network coordinated by Abu Musaab
al-Zarkawi, a man believed to be a bin Laden's
lieutenant.
In a February speech before the UN Security Council
mapping out the US case against Iraq, US Secretary of
State Colin Powell said al-Zarqawi's network had
plotted terrorist attacks in several European
countries, including Italy.
US officials have said al-Zarqawi fled Afghanistan
after the US military campaign there began late 2001.
---
http://www.balkanpeace.org/hed/archive/jul03/hed5908.shtml
THE CENTRE FOR PEACE IN THE BALKANS
The Sunday Times (UK), July 20, 2003
Web sting links Hamza to terror camps
An Insight Investigation
A SOPHISTICATED internet sting has provided fresh evidence linking Abu
Hamza, the British radical Islamic cleric, to terror camps, claim
anti-terrorist police.
Hamza is said to have been so convinced by a British undercover
investigator posing as an extremist website operator that he allegedly
sent him several secret propaganda films designed to attract new
recruits. The videos were used, say investigators, to convince British
Muslims to undergo jihad training at camps in Afghanistan and Bosnia.
The tapes and e-mails were obtained by Glen Jenvey, a 38-year-old
freelance counterintelligence investigator from Wiltshire, over a
period of more than a year. As the evidence flowed in, Jenvey forwarded
it to the FBI, which is now building a case to extradite Hamza to
America.
Last week Scotland Yard confirmed that anti-terrorist branch officers
had taken a statement from Jenvey and sent a copy to the FBI.
The evidence is being marshalled by US government prosecutors in New
York, where Hamza is part of a grand jury investigation into a plot to
provide weapons training to American mujaheddin on a cattle ranch in
Bly, Oregon.
If the grand jury charges Hamza with conspiracy to provide material
support to terrorists, which carries a 25-year jail sentence, sources
close to the case say they will press for his extradition to America.
According to statements given to the anti-terrorist branch in March,
Jenvey set up an internet site called islamic-news.co.uk in 2002 using
the fictitious name Pervez Khan. He published news items on the site
from Kashmiri extremist groups and other hardline Islamic propaganda.
Once established, he sent the material to Hamza's website
supportersofshariah.org, which is now shut down. He was so pleased with
this he decided to put a link to my site from his site. That was his
first big mistake, said Jenvey last week.
As a consequence, Jenvey was able to monitor everyone who logged on to
Hamza's website, a facility he passed on to the FBI so that it could
also monitor Hamza's activities.
He then decided to take the operation a step further. By now I was
getting close to Hamza. He trusted me, said Jenvey. We had been
e-mailing each other a lot and I had been passing the e-mails to the
FBI. We also started to speak on the phone.
I started to suggest I could help him recruit people for his jihad. He
became very excited by this. He would burble prayers down the phone in
an almost demented fashion. I thought he must be a bit mad.
He said he would send me some material to help me win supporters and
prepare them for jihad. He said he had some special tapes but that they
were somewhere secret and he did not keep them in the mosque. He said
they would be sent to me.
Less than a month later a package arrived at Jenvey's home. Inside were
20 audio tapes. A second package arrived a week later with six two-hour
video tapes. Jenvey was shocked by what he saw. One tape starts by
showing a training camp in Bosnia and scenes of urban combat training.
Jihad anthems play in the background and a voice in English says: Make
ready to continue to terrorise the enemy of Allah.
The tape later cuts to Hamza speaking to a private audience in London
about so-called suicide bombers. He appears to use the Koran to justify
the tactic. It is to inflict suffering, it is in the time, in the
methodology of suicide, it is there and at its peak, says Hamza.
In another tape, three British volunteers are interviewed in Bosnia
about their experiences. All three urge Muslims at home to undergo
jihad training and criticise those who are content to merely donate
money or lend moral support.
The first volunteer identifies himself as being from north London. He
says he is a third-year medical student at Birmingham University.
Hiding his face behind a black scarf, he holds an assault rifle aloft
as he speaks to the camera and talks about the satisfaction of seeing
hundreds of dead bodies in Bosnia.
Another tape opens with scenes of what appears to be a massacre of
Serbian civilians in a village in Bosnia. The camera roves around the
scene, focusing on corpses that litter the ground. Some of the bodies
are being taken away on stretchers by distraught relatives. A jihad
anthem plays in the background.
Another tape, allegedly provided by Hamza, is a documentary in Arabic
about the building of the World Trade Center in New York and the
Petronas Towers in Malaysia. It was made prior to September 11.
Jenvey continued to monitor Hamza's website. In April this year he
noticed a film showing Russian soldiers being blown up by Chechnyan
terrorists.
The rest off the film was available through a link from Hamza's
website. It showed training with live ammunition at a camp in
Afghanistan and appears to be an exercise for would-be assassins. Some
of the target images projected on to a screen are of western
politicians. Many of the faces are obscured, but Bill Clinton, the
former US president, is clearly recognisable.
Shortly after Jenvey reported this Hamza's website was shut down by the
internet service provider.
One tape given to Jenvey has already made an impact. It shows Hamza at
a meeting sharing a platform with the US terrorist suspect James Ujaama.
Ujaama designed Hamza's internet site under the name Abu Samaya, but
denied knowing Hamza when first arrested by the FBI. However, his
defence crumbled when the tape was produced. He is now the key witness
against Hamza in the grand jury investigation.
According to court papers, Hamza provided letters of introduction or
sponsorship for people to enter Al-Qaeda camps. The documents say he
sent two emissaries to help Ujaama set up the Bly training camp.
Despite his activities, Hamza is still at liberty in Britain, although
his assets have been frozen and his disability benefits stopped. The
Home Office is trying to strip him of his British citizenship in order
to deport him. The cleric preached at the North London mosque in
Finsbury Park before it was closed down following a police raid in
January.
A senior legal source involved in Hamza's case said: Either they will
strip him of his citizenship and then detain him under new immigration
laws so he rots in prison or they will extradite him to America.
A spokesman for Hamza denied he played any role in terror.
Supportersofshariah.org had many affiliate websites to whom we would
send videos, he said. Abu Hamza's tapes were on sale openly at Finsbury
Park mosque. The grand jury investigation in America is a joke and a
kangaroo court. They have put pressure on Ujaama to say these things.
---
IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, No. 402, January 31, 2003
BOSNIA: SFOR FREES SUSPECTED EXTREMIST
The NATO-led peacekeepers' decision to release a Muslim accused of
links to al-Qaeda may not be enough to ease fears of human rights
abuses.
By Nermina Durmic-Kahrovic in Maoca
NATO-led peacekeeping troops have released a suspected Islamic
extremist they had been holding for three months without charge.
Sabahudin Fiuljanin was handed over to the local authorities on January
30 after an outcry over the circumstances of his detention.
Amnesty International, the Bosnian government and the country's top
human rights court had claimed that NATO's Stabilisation Force, SFOR,
had flouted the 1995 Dayton peace agreement - which states that troops
should maintain stability but not overrule local law - and that the its
anti-terror campaign had led to a number of civil liberties abuses.
Bosnian law allows a suspect to be held without charge for 30 days -
but Fiuljanin had been detained for three times that period. He was
allowed to see a lawyer only twice, and was denied family visits
throughout his incarceration.
Fiuljanin, a resident of Maoca, was arrested on suspicion of spying and
accused of links to al-Qaeda in November, when he was allegedly
discovered in front of an SFOR base in Tuzla with anti-tank weapons in
his car.
Amnesty International spoke out strongly against SFOR's decision to
hold him without charge after the 30-day limit, stating, "The
obligation to respect human rights applies to all members of
international and inter-governmental organisations exercising law
enforcement functions - including NATO."
Bosnia's Human Rights Chamber demanded on January 11 that SFOR hand
over Fijuljanin to the Bosnian authorities, claiming that local and
international law had been violated. The country's tripartite
presidency made a similar call.
SFOR had refused to comply with these requests, but freed their
prisoner on the grounds that the local authorities could now take over
the investigation.
Following Fiuljanin's release, his lawyer Osman Mulahalilovic told the
media that his client had handed in all his weapons in October
following an amnesty.
While Fiuljanin was expected to give a statement to the local police,
it is uncertain if further charges will be pressed against him. SFOR
spokesman Major Shawn Mill told journalists at a press conference on
January 30 that there was an "on going investigation" into the
Fiuljanin case, and that they still considered the suspect to be an
"extremist".
His arrest had sparked a series of SFOR patrols and house searches in
Bosnia, as part of a crackdown on suspected extremists. This pressure
allegedly forced around ten Maoca families to flee their homes earlier
this month.
"Those families had to leave in the midst of such a harsh winter,"
complained Sulejman Osojkic, a member of the dwindling Muslim community.
"They [SFOR] claim that they are for democracy and human rights, and
call us extremists. Why - am I an enemy of SFOR?"
While the Maoca community includes a number of radical Muslims who
fought during the war in Bosnia, they deny all links with Osama bin
Laden's al-Qaeda network. Locally, they are known as Vehabije - a name
given to those who follow puritanical interpretations of Islam.
Police and other local officials in the Tuzla canton - which has
jurisdiction in the area - have repeatedly said that the community did
not pose a threat.
"So far we have not had any incidents or complaints about members of
this group from their neighbours, nor people of different nationalities
who live with them. There are no indications that they represent a
special danger to the safety of the area or the community they belong
to," Tuzla police commissioner Ivica Divkovic told IWPR.
He said the Maoca community was made up of Bosnian citizens and Muslims
from neighbouring Yugoslavia. Locals say there are around 20 such
families still living in the area.
SFOR spokesman Major John Dowling explained that the increased SFOR
activity was part of Operation Harvest, which was designed to collect
illegally stashed weapons from the war, and had nothing to do with
targeting Muslim radicals.
He added that the NATO-led force had received no complaints from any of
the locals, and insisted that its activities had been misinterpreted.
"SFOR treats all people equally - we have no preference for any
ethnicity, religion or nationality," he said.
But Admir Mujkanovic, president of the municipality that includes
Maoca, told IWPR he had warned SFOR a few months ago that residents
were being upset by the frequent patrols and late night helicopter
flights. "They told me this would not happen again, but that has
remained just a promise," he said.
Nermina Durmic Kahrovic is a regular IWPR contributor
(...) Balkan Crisis Report is supported by the Department for
International Development, the European Commission, the Swedish
International Development and Cooperation Agency, The Netherlands
Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and other funders. IWPR also acknowledges
general support from the Ford Foundation. For further details on this
project, other information services and media programmes, visit IWPR's
website: www.iwpr.net (...)
---
9-11: The Balkans & Prior Warning
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2002/12-30-2002/insider/
vo18no26_warning.htm
The New American
Vol. 18, No. 26 - December 30, 2002
9-11: The Balkans & Prior Warning
Saudi nationals Tareq and Yaser al-Jahini are among the 345 people
sought by the FBI in connection with Black Tuesday. According to the
November 11th Portland Oregonian, Tareq came under FBI scrutiny more
than three years before the 9-11 atrocity. At the time, he was studying
aircraft maintenance at Portland Community College, with the supposed
objective of becoming a mechanic at Saudi Arabian Airlines. "But as FBI
agents traced his movements ? they found some connections that
suggested other possible motives for his interest in aviation," notes
the paper.
Tareq?s brother Yaser was among the Muslim mujahedin fighters who
"visited Bosnia in the early 1990s to help local Muslims wage war on
the Serbs," continues the Oregonian. "The government also thinks he
told a known al-Qaeda operative he would identify potential terrorism
targets while in the Southwest...." Tareq was also connected to people
accused of terrorist acts in the Middle East. In a memo written in
early 2001, Phoenix FBI counter-terrorism agent Kenneth Williams
connected the al-Jahini brothers with "nine other instances of Middle
Eastern students enrolled in aviation courses" in America. One Muslim
aviation security student "had tried to enter a commercial airline
cockpit in 1999, later saying he thought it was a bathroom," relates
the paper.
According to an intelligence summary prepared by congressional
researcher Eleanor Hill, Agent Williams concluded that "Islamic
extremists, studying everything from aviation security to flying, could
be learning how to hijack or destroy aircraft and to evade airport
security." His detailed warnings, tragically, were ignored.
FBI agents in Pakistan are pulling on another Balkans-connected
al-Qaeda thread trying to locate Osama bin Laden. Dr. Amer Aziz, a
British-educated Pakistani physician, "was abducted by Pakistani
intelligence agents near his home ? and handed over to U.S.
interrogators seeking information on surviving ?inner circle? members
of the terrorist network?s command structure," reported the November
15th Herald of London. Dr. Aziz is believed to be the physician who
treated bin Laden?s kidney ailment two years ago, and the FBI suspects
he treated the terrorist for bomb splinters after he fled from
Afghanistan last December.
During the mid-1990s, reports the Herald, Dr. Aziz "volunteered to help
Muslims in Kosovo," where the bin Laden-supported narco-Marxist Kosovo
Liberation Army was seeking to tear away that Serbian province as part
of a scheme to create a "Greater Albania." With the help of the UN,
NATO, and the Clinton administration, bin Laden?s Balkan allies now
control both Kosovo and large parts of Bosnia - a handy platform for
launching terrorist assaults on Europe.
---
AFP Bosnian, US officials meet on Algerians sent to Guantanamo
SARAJEVO, Oct 19 (AFP) - Bosnian and US officials have held talks about
the status of four Algerians who were handed over by the government to
the US authorities early this year, and have since been held without
charge in the US military base at Guantanamo, Cuba, the Bosnian foreign
ministry said on
Saturday.
The talks follow a Bosnian judicial ruling which said the Algerians,
suspected by the United States of terrorism, should not have been
handed over.
Bosnian officials met US ambassador Clifford Bond on Friday and
informed him that the October 11 ruling by the Bosnian Human Rights
Chamber required the authorities to use diplomatic channels in order to
protect the human rights of the four and provide them with consular
support, a ministry
statement said.
The statement said the ambassador would notify Washington so that the
"possibilities of cooperation between Bosnia-Herzegovina and the United
States on implementing the ruling of the Human Rights Chamber could be
considered."
The chamber had ruled that by handing the prisoners over
Bosnia-Hercegovina and its Muslim-Croat federation had violated several
articles of the European Human Rights Convention -- including
expulsion, illegal detention and handing over people to jurisdictions
in which they risk the death penalty.
The provisions of the Convention have been enshrined in Bosnia's
constitution.
As a result of the ruling the chamber ordered the Bosnian authorities
to seek assurances from Washington that the four suspects would not be
subjected to the death penalty.
The Bosnian authorities were also obliged to engage lawyers to protect
the rights of the four while in US custody, and in the case of possible
military criminal or other proceedings against them.
The four -- Hadz Boudellaa, Boumediene Lakhdar, Mohamed Nechle and
Saber Lahmar -- were detained in Bosnia last year along with two other
people of Arab origin on suspicion of links to international terrorism.
Five of the six suspects had Bosnian citizenship, but the government
revoked it after their detention.
The Human Rights Chamber was established under the Dayton peace accord
that ended Bosnia's 1992-95 war, leaving the country split into two
highly independent entities -- the Serbs' Republika Srpska and the
Muslim-Croat Federation.
Despite a decision by the Muslim-Croat supreme court to release the
six, they were handed over to the United States in January, and are
currently held at the Guantanamo facility, where suspected members of
the al-Qaeda and Taliban Islamic extremist groups captured in
Afghanistan are being kept.
The United States has refused to consider the detainees as prisoners of
war, and is holding them without trial and without granting them access
to lawyers.
---
http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/apr2002-daily/03-04-2002/world/w12.htm
April 3, 2002
Nato worried about terrorists in Bosnia
SARAJEVO: International terrorist organisations such
as Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network often travel
through Bosnia and have associates in the Balkan
country, the commander of the Nato force here said
Tuesday.
But US General John Sylvester, commander of the
Nato-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR), said it remained
unclear whether they were planning attacks in Bosnia
or using the country as a safe haven. "There are, of
course, a number of international terrorist
organisations, and individuals who are within those
organisations, who periodically transit
Bosnia-Hercegovina," Sylvester said.
"In fact, there are international terrorist
organisations which have individuals within
Bosnia-Hercegovina," he added. "What we have to
determine is whether or not the individuals involved
are here for the purpose of planning operations or are
here for the purpose of something else, being
supported, being provided documentation, seeking
respite or whatever," Sylvester said.
Asked whether al-Qaeda was present in Bosnia, he said:
"Sure, it is a transnational terrorist organisation
and there certainly have been members of al-Qaeda
here." Last October Nato said it disrupted an al-Qaeda
cell in Bosnia after a group of six Arabs were
arrested by Bosnian police on suspicion of planning an
attack on the US embassy in Sarajevo.
---
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2002/03-25-2002/insider/
vo18no06_kosovo.htm
THE NEW AMERICAN, Vol. 18, No. 06, March 25, 2002
Bosnia: Hub of Terrorist Axis?
In a series of reports beginning in 1996, The New American warned that
Bosnia, the UN-administered former Yugoslav province, had become a
staging area for Muslim terrorist groups. Following the Black Tuesday
attacks, we reviewed those prior warnings and pointed out that both
Bosnia and Kosovo had become UN-protected "safe havens" for Osama bin
Laden's al-Qaeda network (see "Behind the Terror Network" in our
November 5, 2001 issue). A February 21st AP report from Sarajevo
confirms those warnings.
Last October, NATO troops raided the offices of the Saudi High
Commissioner for Aid to Bosnia, a "charity" created by Saudi Prince
Selman bin Abdul-Aziz allegedly to aid Bosnian Muslim war orphans.
Among the materials seized during the raid were "photos of targets of
past terror attacks - the World Trade Center, the Pentagon,... the
U.S.S. Cole,... and the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.... The
pictures showed the targets both before and after the attacks."
NATO troops captured six suspected collaborators in the Black Tuesday
attack, including Bensayah Belkacem, "who U.S. officials allege served
as Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant in Europe." Also netted in the raid
were items suggesting terrorist attacks yet to come: Street maps of
Washington, D.C., on which government buildings had been marked; a
computer program
explaining how to use crop duster aircrafts to spread pesticide; and
"materials used to make fake State Department identification badges and
credit cards...."
"The raid of the agency coincided with the arrests last October of six
Algerian-born men, including one, Sabir Lamar, who had worked for the
Saudi organization," continued the AP report. "All six were handed over
last month to U.S. authorities, who have said they had evidence
implicating the suspects in planned post-Sept. 11 attacks on Western
targets. Lamar was the son-in-law of a local employee of the U.S.
Embassy in Sarajevo who had the keys to the building...."
NATO's intervention made it possible for the radical Muslim terrorist
network to gain its European beachhead in the Balkans. NATO is a
regional affiliate of the UN, which supposedly provides the authority
for the war against terrorism.
----- Original Message -----
From: Predrag Tosic
To: Questo indirizzo email è protetto dagli spambots. È necessario abilitare JavaScript per vederlo.
Sent: Sunday, March 24, 2002 6:53 AM
Subject: [yugoslaviainfo] Al-Qaida Plot Revealed In Sarajevo (AP report)
Al-Qaida Plot Revealed in Sarajevo
By Alexandar S. Dragicevic
Associated Press Writer
Saturday, March 23, 2002; 7:05 AM
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina
Al-Qaida terrorists planned a devastating attack on Americans in
Sarajevo after meeting in Bulgaria to identify European
targets, a high-ranking Bosnian official said Saturday.
The official, who insisted on anonymity, told The
Associated Press that intelligence reports on the
meeting in Sofia prompted a special government session
Thursday night in which threats against the U.S.
Embassy and other European embassies were discussed.
The countries of the other embassies were not disclosed.
At the Sofia meeting, members of al-Qaida decided
that, "in Sarajevo something will happen to Americans
similar to New York last September," said the
official. "The report did not specify when the
al-Qaida meeting was held or who attended.
The U.S. Embassy in Bosnia on Wednesday shut down to
the public after receiving word of a possible
terrorist threat. The embassy closed entirely on Friday.
U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Karen Williams declined to
comment on the situation Saturday. Bosnian special
police forces were seen around the compound, along
with normal U.S. security units.
In Sofia, Bulgaria's Foreign Ministry said it had
received no information on such a meeting, either
"from Bosnian authorities or from any other official
sources." It promised an investigation if "this
information proves to be serious."
On Tuesday, just a day before the U.S. Embassy
received the threats, Bosnian police raided an Islamic
charity, Bosnian Ideal Future, also known as
Benevolentia International Foundation, seizing
weapons, plans for making bombs, booby-traps and bogus
passports.
On Friday, police announced they had arrested Munib
Zahiragic, a Bosnian citizen and the head of the
Bosnian chapter of the charity. Zahiragic is also a
former member of the Bosnian Muslim secret police, AID.
Zahiragic was arrested on charges of espionage, which
carries a maximum 10 years in prison. No details on
whom he was supposed to be spying for were released.
As a part of the war on terrorism, Bosnia's government
in January ordered an investigation into the work of
foreign humanitarian agencies. Two weeks ago,
investigators reported funds were missing from three
Islamic charities, among them Benevolentia.
The United States recently froze the assets of
Benevolentia, with head offices in Illinois and New Jersey.
The U.S. and British embassies were closed for several
days in October due to terrorist threats. They
reopened after local police arrested six naturalized
Bosnians, all of them Algerian natives, suspected of
plotting post-Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. interests in
Bosnia and elsewhere.
The suspects were handed over to U.S. authorities in
January, and now are being held at the U.S. military
base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Five of the six were
employed as humanitarian aid workers; one was
suspected of being Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant
for Europe.
More than 1 million Muslims live in Bosnia, most of
them native to the country but also including dozens
of former Islamic fighters, or mujahedeen, who came
mostly from the Middle East to fight on the Muslim
side in the 1992-1995 war against the country's Serbs
and Croats.
---
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?f=/stories/20020315/
344843.html
March 15, 2002
U.S. supported al-Qaeda cells during Balkan Wars
Fought Serbian troops
Isabel Vincent, National Post
Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network has been
active in the Balkans for years, most recently helping
Kosovo rebels battle for independence from Serbia with
the financial and military backing of the United
States and NATO.
The claim that al-Qaeda played a role in the Balkan
wars of the 1990s came from an alleged FBI document
former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic presented in
his defence before the Hague tribunal last week. Mr.
Milosevic faces 66 counts of war crimes and genocide.
Although Hague prosecutors have challenged the
veracity of the document, which Mr. Milosevic
identified as a Congressional statement from the FBI
dated last December, Balkan experts say the presence
of al-Qaeda militants in Kosovo and Bosnia is well
documented.
Today, al-Qaeda members are helping the National
Liberation Army, a rebel group in Macedonia, fight the
Skopje government in a bid for independence, military
analysts say. Last week, Michael Steiner, the United
Nations administrator in Kosovo, warned of "importing
the Afghan danger to Europe" because several cells
trained and financed by al-Qaeda remain in the region.
"Many members of the Kosovo Liberation Army were sent
for training in terrorist camps in Afghanistan," said
James Bissett, former Canadian ambassador to
Yugoslavia and an expert on the Balkans. "Milosevic is
right. There is no question of their participation in
conflicts in the Balkans. It is very well documented."
The arrival in the Balkans of the so-called Afghan
Arabs, who are from various Middle Eastern states and
linked to al-Qaeda, began in 1992 soon after the war
in Bosnia. According to Lenard Cohen, professor of
political science at Simon Fraser University,
mujahedeen fighters who travelled to Afghanistan to
resist the Soviet occupation in the 1980s later
"migrated to Bosnia hoping to assist their Islamic
brethren in a struggle against Serbian [and for a
time] Croatian forces."
The Bosnian Muslims welcomed their assistance. After
the Bosnian war, "hundreds of Bosnian passports were
provided to the mujahedeen by the Muslim-controlled
government in Sarajevo," said Prof. Cohen in a recent
article titled Bin Laden and the war in the Balkans.
Many al-Qaeda members decided to stay in the region
after marrying local Muslim women, he said.
They also set up secret terrorist training camps in
Bosnia -- activities financed by the sale of opium
produced in Afghanistan and secretly shipped through
Turkey and Kosovo into central Europe.
In the years immediately before the NATO bombing of
Yugoslavia in 1999, the al-Qaeda militants moved into
Kosovo, the southern province of Serbia, to help
ethnic Albanian extremists of the KLA mount their
terrorist campaign against Serb targets in the region.
The mujahedeen "were financed by Saudi and United Arab
Emirates money," said one Western military official,
asking anonymity. "They were mercenaries who were not
running the show in Kosovo, but were used by the KLA
to do their dirty work."
The United States, which had originally trained the
Afghan Arabs during the war in Afghanistan, supported
them in Bosnia and then in Kosovo. When NATO forces
launched their military campaign against Yugoslavia
three years ago to unseat Mr. Milosevic, they entered
the Kosovo conflict on the side of the KLA, which had
already received "substantial" military and financial
support from bin Laden's network, analysts say.
In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes on the
United States, NATO began to worry about the presence
in the Balkans of the Islamist terrorist cells it had
supported throughout the 1990s.
ivencent@...
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http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/bosnia020117.html
ABC News, January 17, 2002
Formenting Fundamentalism
Bosnia: A New Playground for Militant Islamists?
By Dada Jovanovic
S A R A J E V O, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Jan. 17
— In his jeans, warm gray coat, funky round glasses
and with his ever-present mobile phone, Faruk Visca
greets visitors in the Bosnian capital with a warm
smile and a handshake.
Unless they're women. Female visitors have to do
without a handshake.
As a "Muslim brother," Visca, 22, refuses to shake
women's hands. He is a follower of Hassan al Banna,
who founded the radical Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in
1928. It is considered the Arab world's oldest
fundamentalist Muslim group.
Once a part of communist-controlled Yugoslavia,
Bosnia-Herzegovina had little contact or sympathy for
pan-Islamism. But in the ethnic war between 1992 and
1995, hundreds of Muslims from around the Arab world
helped their Slavic fellow Muslims fight against
Bosnian Serbs and Croats.
Six years after the Bosnian conflict, many foreign
fighters — or mujahids, as they call themselves — have
settled in the Eastern European country, and Bosnian
authorities warn that militant Islam is on the rise in
the Muslim-dominated country.
In October, Bosnian police arrested five Algerians and
a naturalized Bosnian citizen of Algerian or Yemeni
origin on suspicion of having ties to Osama bin
Laden's al Qaeda network.
A Bosnian court today ordered the release of the six
men, who were arrested by local police acting on a
U.S. tip after threats closed the U.S. and British
embassies in Sarajevo for five days in mid-October.
Their release order came amid local reports that the
men would be transferred to the custody of the U.S.
government and transferred to a U.S. detention
facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Under local law, the
men could not be held beyond three months, a period
that would have ended Friday. But in recent weeks,
Bosnian media have speculated the United States did
not provide hard evidence to charge the men, and human
rights groups have been urging their release.
Posters Met With Arrest
Visca has been concerned about the crackdown on
hard-line Muslims in Bosnia since the Sept. 11
attacks. Following the start of the U.S. military
campaign in Afghanistan, Visca and like-minded friends
started pasting posters across Sarajevo.
"Millions of dead and wounded, millions of widows and
orphans, hundreds of cities and villages destroyed,"
said one poster.
In bigger type, it lists the regions where Visca and
his friends believe Muslims are being victimized:
"Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, Chechnya, Kashmir,
Bosnia?"
And finally, the crucial question: "Do Muslim lives
deserve a minute of silence? It should be centuries."
The posters got him arrested and he was detained for
24 hours. Local authorities in Sarajevo closed a bank
account of an association he had officially registered
under the name of "Islam Bosnia."
A Devout Muslim
The son of an engineer, Visca comes from a typical
middle-class family. His mother is highly educated and
his younger sister likes wearing miniskirts and going
to rock concerts. They think Visca's behavior is
unusual.
His Islamic education came from his grandfather, who
lived in Germany and was an avid reader of the works
of author Alija Izetbegovic, a veteran Bosnian Muslim
politician who became the first president of an
independent Bosnia.
Visca embraced his grandfather's interest in Islam but
went further. A devout Muslim, he prays five times a
day. He also follows the teachings of Muslim
Brotherhood founder al Banna, who is also been known
to have inspired many of the Taliban and al Qaeda
soldiers in Afghanistan.
Visca says he is dismayed at the indifference some of
his fellow Muslims have toward Islam. He says local
Muslims fought bravely against Serbs and Croats during
the war, but he is concerned because they also like to
"drink, sing and whistle at women in Sarajevo."
He believes the Bosnian Muslims who went to
Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban are saving
the honor of Islam. "They don't need a bottle of
slivovitz (a local alcohol) to go and fight
courageously." He says he is pleased that their wives,
who stayed behind, respect Islamic rules and cover
their heads with scarves or veils.
Afghanistan's ousted hard-line Taliban wins his
sympathy. "All they wanted is proof against [Osama]
bin Laden, but [the] Americans never gave them
anything," he says.
But he has serious problems with bin Laden's methods.
"Why bomb the American embassies?" he asks,
referencing to the deadly bombings of U.S. embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. The United States
blames bin Laden for those attacks.
Growing Saudi Influence
Like bin Laden, Visca dislikes the government of Saudi
Arabia for its close relationship with the United
States. He particularly dislikes Saudi Crown Prince
Abdullah. "He is a valet of America who thinks he is a
pharaoh," Visca scoffs.
Saudi Arabia has paid for the construction of a huge
new mosque in Sarajevo built of concrete and marble,
which has been the subject of much controversy in the
Bosnian capital.
The King Fahd Ibn Adellaziz Mosque, which cost an
estimated $10 million to build, was named for the
Saudi king. It was opened in September 2000 by a Saudi
prince and can accommodate some 5,000 faithful.
While some Bosnians look upon the mosque as a symbol
of growing Saudi influence and have publicly said the
cash could have gone into developmental projects
instead, many Bosnian Muslims worship at the mosque
and avail themselves of the services of an affiliated
adjacent cultural center and orphanage.
But despite his opposition to the Saudi royal family,
Visca greets a lot of his friends at the mosque.
Paradise and Hell
Bosnian Deputy Foreign Minister Ivica Misic has
concerns over the influence of the mosque. He says
anti-Semitism is rampant on an Web site affiliated
with the Islamic center and that poor local women were
paid to wear burqas, the all-enveloping cloak that is
mandatory for Saudi women.
Visitors to the mosque are believed to be monitored by
local authorities in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Information is then reportedly passed to international
agencies, including the CIA.
After Sept. 11, Bosnian authorities reviewed the files
of all foreigners who had been awarded Bosnian
citizenship after the war.
"We stripped off Bosnian citizenship from 94 of them,
but only 17 were located. All others had fake
addresses," Misic said.
Bosnian authorities know their country could become a
magnet for extremist Muslims. But Bosnian Interior
Minister Muhamed Besic is determined to stop that from
happening. "They think Bosnia is paradise for them,
but I tell them it will be hell."