Il terrorismo "buono" / 4
Bosnia: A Safe Haven for Terrorists?
---
http://www.tol.cz/look/BRR/
article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=9&NrIssue=1&NrSection=2&NrArticle
=2240&search=search&SearchKeywords=Esad+Hecimovic&SearchLevel=0
TOL - Balkan Reconstruction Report
25 September 2001
Bosnia: A Safe Haven for Terrorists?
Osama Bin Laden may or may not be directly connected to Islamist groups
in Bosnia, but there is little doubt that his message resounded in some
quarters.
by Esad Hecimovic
ZENICA, Bosnia--Like much of the world, Bosnia watched with horror and
disbelief the pictures of terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
As soon as the finger of suspicion was pointed at Islamic
fundamentalists, Bosnia's own encounters with Islamists during and
after the 1992-5 war were recalled. Naturally, the alleged ties of the
Islamic volunteers who fought in Bosnia with Osama bin Laden, the Saudi
dissident who the U.S. authorities suspect was behind the attacks, came
into focus once again. The public was also quick to recall the reports
in the Bosnian press after the war according to which bin Laden had
been granted Bosnian citizenship. Muhamed Besic, the Bosniak-Croat
Federation Interior Minister, formally denied that was true.
The November 1995 Dayton Accords which ended the 1992-5 war stipulated
"the dismantling of the units of foreign volunteers and the departure
of foreign instructors" from Bosnia. Translated to the language of the
Bosnian reality at the time, this provision meant in the first place
that foreign Islamic Mujahedeen volunteers leave the country. The
obligation was a precondition for NATO troops to come to Bosnia, and
later on it was used occasionally as a condition for U.S. economic and
intelligence assistance. The issue has soured the relations between the
Bosniak Muslim part of the Bosnian leadership with the United States.
Janet Bogue, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for european
and eurasian affairs, said during her visit to Sarajevo on 15 September
that the Bosnian authorities hadn't yet fulfilled their Dayton
obligation.
Most Islamic volunteers who remain in Bosnia have in the meantime been
granted Bosnian citizenship either through marrying local women or
under the provision of the former Citizenship Law that made it
possible for foreign members of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina
(ABiH) to obtain citizenship. Interior Minister Besic promised that all
such cases, believed to amount to several hundreds, would be examined
by a special government commission.
The extent of the U.S. pressure on Bosnian authorities is perhaps best
illustrated by Besic's 20 September statement in which he pledged that
a number of suspected terrorist who hold Bosnian citizenship will soon
be handed over to the states demanding their extradition. "Three
Egyptians who hold Bosnian citizenship are in prison [and] will soon be
extradited, most probably to Egypt, and their Bosnian citizenship has
been canceled," Besic said, adding that two persons holding Bosnian
passports have already been extradited to France as suspected
terrorists. He denied rumors that there were terrorist training camps
in Bosnia.
The government's tough line on suspected Islamic terrorists is
anything but uncontroversial. A number of lawyers have questioned the
interior minister's right to invalidate citizenship certificates of
those Islamic fighters who were members of the ABiH, except in cases
when they fraudulently claimed ABiH membership. Perhaps more worrying
are the threats of Islamic groups in Bosnia to retaliate if the
government goes ahead with its extradition plans.
IDENTITY CRISES
Problems arising from stolen or forged identities have been the main
obstacle to the investigations so far. When Said Hodzic, a resident of
Han Bila near Travnik, was arrested on 27 April, the public was not
informed. Hodzic was arrested on the basis of a "red" warrant issued by
Interpol in August 2000. He was tried in absentia in Paris, and
sentenced to five years in prison on 6 April this year for dealing in
false passports and other documents for Islamic militants in Canada,
Europe, and Turkey. Bosnian authorities extradited him to France this
summer, despite protests and threats from Islamic groups. Only then did
the federal Interior Ministry acknowledged the arrests of a number of
former members of the El Mujahid unit upon the arrest orders of France,
Egypt, and Croatia where they were wanted on various terrorism-related
charges. Established by Islamist groups from abroad and based in
central Bosnia, the El Mujahid unit fought on the side of Bosniak
Muslims as a part of the ABiH.
At the time of his arrest, Said Hodzic held Bosnian citizenship,
granted under the former Citizenship Law. After marrying a Bosnian, he
accepted her family name--his real name being Karim Said Atmani.
According to U.S. military sources in Bosnia, he is "an expert for
document counterfeiting for the Algerian Armed Islamic Group" usually
known under the French abbreviation GIA. In addition to France, Said
Atmani has been sought since December 1999 by U.S. and Canadian
prosecutors. Bosnian police had claimed he did not reside in Bosnia,
but according to the Stars and Stripes, a daily paper for U.S. troops
in Bosnia, "U.S. peacekeepers issued a bulletin around New Year's 2000
asking troops to keep an eye out for Atmani."
Together with Atmani, Ahmed Ressam was convicted on charges related to
terrorism, violence, and property destruction on 6 April in Paris. On
the same day, the federal court in Los Angeles found Ressam guilty of
attempted terrorist attacks on the millennium celebrations in the
United States. French investigative judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere appeared
as an expert witness at Ressam's trial in Los Angeles. Judge Bruguiere
identified Ressam as a member of the "upper echelons" of the GIA, and a
person connected to Osama bin Laden.
Judge Bruguiere confirmed the connection between Ressam and Atmani as
former roommates in Montreal, Canada. His statement served as key
evidence linking together the so-called Roubaix faction of the
Franco-Algerian Mujahedin movement that fought in Bosnia, with bin
Laden. Bin Laden himself is not known to have ever been in the Balkans.
Cases such as Atmani's give credence to the claims that convicted
terrorists frequently found shelter in Bosnia.
In the investigation, Judge Bruguiere spent some time in Zenica,
central Bosnia, in 1997. At his request, the cantonal court and police
carried out a number of inquiries and hearings. In addition to this
investigation, there was also a local investigation. Two members of the
Roubaix faction were tried and sentenced to 20 years in prison for
banditry. One of the convicts, Mouloud Boughelane, was extradited to
France on 1 June, 1999. The other person convicted, Lionel Dumont,
escaped from a Sarajevo prison five days before the scheduled
extradition. Dumont had found shelter in Bosnia after escaping the
shootout following a armed raid by French police on a faction safe
house in Roubaix. The Roubaix faction of Franco-Algerian Mujahedeens is
the only group that fought in Bosnia for which the international
officials have claimed direct links to bin Laden.
There are two other witness accounts of bin Laden's support for the
Mujahedin combatants in Bosnia. Both have originated from the witnesses
who agreed to testify under the U.S. government's witness protection
program at a New York trial following the attacks on U.S. embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998.
The year 1994 was probably crucial for the extension of bin Laden's
network to the Balkans. The crimes of genocide and ethnic cleansing
against Bosnian Muslims "provoked the anger of the Muslim world in
1994," according to David Ruhnke, the lawyer who represented Khalfana
Mohamed at the trial for the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania. The Muslim world responded by sending humanitarian,
financial, and military aid--and volunteers. It is believed that parts
of this movement later attempted to instigate and organize the Jihad,
roughly translated as "struggle" or "Holy War", in the areas inhabited
by ethnic Albanians, in Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania.
The largely passive Western attitude toward the genocide against
Bosniak Muslims became one of the leitmotifs of bin Laden's
"Declaration of War against Americans, Jews and Crusaders." Already in
the first lines of this writing, which was published in August 1996,
bin Laden recalls the Bosnian tragedy: "The world is witnessing all
this, and not only have they not responded to these evil and cruel
events, but they have also denied the right to the helpless people to
obtain the necessary weapons to defend themselves. All this is a public
conspiracy between the US and their allies, protected and excused by
the faithless United Nations." Bin Laden reminds in this statement "the
youth of Islam, who have fought in Afghanistan and Bosnia-Herzegovina"
that "the struggle is not over yet."
"This is not peace, this is humiliation. This is not peace, this is a
conspiracy to bring down Islam and destroy Muslims." The statement is
from the first post-war booklet by Imad el-Misri, one of the key
religious leaders of the El Mujahid unit. "Where were they for the past
three years, when Muslims were slaughtered and cities fell one after
another? The real goal of this peace is to stop Muslim conquests and
victories, and to extinguish the light of the Islamic sahva (awakening)
that started spreading all over the world. Muslims, be wary of this
peace and the aims of the West and America. This new peace is, in fact,
a new occupation," wrote el-Misri in 1996 in the introduction to his
booklet The Plot to Crush Islam and Destroy Muslims in the Most Recent
Times.
Imad el-Misri was arrested in Bosnia on 18 July this year upon an
Egyptian warrant. The Egyptian embassy in Sarajevo has rejected all
requests to reveal the nature of charges against him. El-Misri
possesses Bosnian documents in the name of Eslam Durmo, called Imad,
son of Ahmed and mother Hayam Hassan, born 18 October 1964 in Cairo.
After his marriage to a Bosnian woman, he adopted her family name
instead of his previous name, Eslam Ahmed Ahmed Farragala. El-Misri
became a father of three. Regardless of his Bosnian documents, the
district attorney's office and the Second District Court in Sarajevo
concluded on the basis of information provided by the Egyptian embassy
in Sarajevo that it had been proved "beyond reasonable doubt that the
real name of the suspect is Al Husseiny Helmy Arman Ahmed, that he was
born on 14 January 1960 in the town of Kene, and that he is a citizen
of Egypt." Therefore, el-Misri was suspected of the offense of "giving
false data".
BOSNIAN FOLLOWERS
After eight years of constant activity in central Bosnia and the
region of Sarajevo, the number of el-Misri's followers is estimated to
be in the hundreds, perhaps even thousands. Between 1992 and 1995, more
than two thousand Bosniaks went through a forty-day religious training
led by el-Misri, which was a precondition for admittance into the
El-Mujahid brigade. According to his supporters, el-Misri supervised 19
training sessions during the war, and six after the war. He also held
numerous lectures on behalf of the Active Islamic Youth, an
organization recruiting young Bosniak Muslims. So far, nobody has
claimed that el-Misri belongs to any international Islamic group.
Supporters of the Active Islamic Youth are leading a campaign for his
release from prison.
The case of Said Atmani is different. He was known as Hisham in
Bosnian Islamic circles. There are persistent claims that he is
connected to the GIA and the Roubaix faction, linked to bin Laden. A
group of Bosnian supporters of the London sheikh Abu Hamza el-Misri
threatened to retaliate following his arrest. After "the Bosnian
government had handed over a Mujahedin to France to be tried by the
French under secular laws," a Bosnian group called Supporters of
Shariah (SOS) declared on their websites
http://www.geocities.com/valabara and www.geocities.com/sos-bosna that
"we are begging Allah the Almighty to punish all those who participated
in imprisonment of the Mujahedeen, either at our hands or through some
other punishment. Amin! We are saying publicly that all of you who are
participating in imprisonment of the Mujahedeen will feel our
punishment on your skin and necks. Blood and martyrdom, as well as
imprisonment of any Mujahedeen will be avenged--Inshallah! Each and
every action to free the mujahedeen is allowed." The Bosnian faction of
the SOS was the only one to publish the translation of bin Laden's
Declaration of War into Bosnian.
It is impossible to understand bin Laden's Balkan ties if one simply
searches for the cells of his organization Al Qaida. This Arabic word,
meaning "base," was first used in Afghanistan in the eighties. It
essentially referred to bin Laden's training camps for Islamic
volunteers in Afghanistan. According to the New York indictment of bin
Laden for the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, Al
Qaida functions in two ways. It is an independent organization, but it
also works in cooperation with other terrorist organizations. The
Egyptian organizations, Islamic Jihad and El Gamaa Islamia (Islamic
Group), as well as numerous other Jihad factions, are mentioned as
groups functioning under the Al Qaida umbrella. But even Pakistani
groups, which were widely believed to have been sent to Bosnia by bin
Laden, used their own names in Bosnia.
Balkan countries haven't been spared from Islamist terrorist attacks.
Perhaps the best known one is the explosion of a car bomb in the
Croatian port of Rijeka. When Tala'at Fuad Qassem was arrested in
Zagreb in mid September 1995, El Gamaa Islamia issued a threat to
Croatia. A car bomb exploded in front of the police headquarters in
Rijeka on 20 October 1995. The explosion destroyed most of the
building, killing one and wounding 29 persons. El Gamaa Islamia claimed
responsibility a day later, announcing that it would further punish
Croatia if Qassem is extradited to Egypt where he had already been
sentenced to death by the court-martial in Alexandria in 1992. He had
resided as an asylum seeker in Denmark under a pseudonym. He reached
Zagreb in transit to Bosnia, with the intention of writing a book about
Bosnia. Six years later Abdullah Essindar, also a citizen of Bosnia,
was arrested in Zenica. The district attorney in Zenica claimed that he
was, in fact, Al Sharif Hassan Mahmud Saad, a citizen of Egypt.
Essindar claimed that there had been a misunderstanding because his
nickname was Sahar, while Croatia and Egypt were seeking extradition of
a man whose nickname was Sahr in connection with the car bomb explosion
in Rijeka, in September of 1995. On 20 September Interior Minister
Besic said that a person suspected of involvement in the Rijeka bombing
had been arrested and would soon be extradited to Croatia. The suspect
holds Bosnian citizenship.
The war crimes tribunal in The Hague is not likely to face the problem
of suspects' elusive identities. The Hague prosecutor is not planning
to bring to court any Mujahedin, according to an unnamed tribunal
source quoted in the New York Times of 2 September 2001. Instead, three
high ranking ABiH officers have been indicted and transferred to The
Hague for crimes against Croatian and Serb POWs and civilians in
Central Bosnia, which this investigation ascribes to members of the El
Mujahid unit. The officers had command responsibility for the El
Mujahid unit.
In the minds of Mujahedin supporters, "the July arrest of Sheikh
el-Misri, and the Hague indictments one week later" are a result of "a
secret operation of America and the Bosnian police, now under communist
control," according to Abu Hamza, a Mujahedin veteran of the Bosnian
war. The have frequently Islamists vowed to retaliate. Bin Laden may or
may not be directly connected to Islamist groups here. There is little
doubt though that his message is in the hearts of Islamic
fundamentalists in the Balkans.
Esad Hecimovic is a journalist with the Sarajevo Dani news magazine. He
has written extensively on Islamist groups in the Balkans.
Copyright © 2003 Transitions Online. All rights reserved.
Bosnia: A Safe Haven for Terrorists?
---
http://www.tol.cz/look/BRR/
article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=9&NrIssue=1&NrSection=2&NrArticle
=2240&search=search&SearchKeywords=Esad+Hecimovic&SearchLevel=0
TOL - Balkan Reconstruction Report
25 September 2001
Bosnia: A Safe Haven for Terrorists?
Osama Bin Laden may or may not be directly connected to Islamist groups
in Bosnia, but there is little doubt that his message resounded in some
quarters.
by Esad Hecimovic
ZENICA, Bosnia--Like much of the world, Bosnia watched with horror and
disbelief the pictures of terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
As soon as the finger of suspicion was pointed at Islamic
fundamentalists, Bosnia's own encounters with Islamists during and
after the 1992-5 war were recalled. Naturally, the alleged ties of the
Islamic volunteers who fought in Bosnia with Osama bin Laden, the Saudi
dissident who the U.S. authorities suspect was behind the attacks, came
into focus once again. The public was also quick to recall the reports
in the Bosnian press after the war according to which bin Laden had
been granted Bosnian citizenship. Muhamed Besic, the Bosniak-Croat
Federation Interior Minister, formally denied that was true.
The November 1995 Dayton Accords which ended the 1992-5 war stipulated
"the dismantling of the units of foreign volunteers and the departure
of foreign instructors" from Bosnia. Translated to the language of the
Bosnian reality at the time, this provision meant in the first place
that foreign Islamic Mujahedeen volunteers leave the country. The
obligation was a precondition for NATO troops to come to Bosnia, and
later on it was used occasionally as a condition for U.S. economic and
intelligence assistance. The issue has soured the relations between the
Bosniak Muslim part of the Bosnian leadership with the United States.
Janet Bogue, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for european
and eurasian affairs, said during her visit to Sarajevo on 15 September
that the Bosnian authorities hadn't yet fulfilled their Dayton
obligation.
Most Islamic volunteers who remain in Bosnia have in the meantime been
granted Bosnian citizenship either through marrying local women or
under the provision of the former Citizenship Law that made it
possible for foreign members of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina
(ABiH) to obtain citizenship. Interior Minister Besic promised that all
such cases, believed to amount to several hundreds, would be examined
by a special government commission.
The extent of the U.S. pressure on Bosnian authorities is perhaps best
illustrated by Besic's 20 September statement in which he pledged that
a number of suspected terrorist who hold Bosnian citizenship will soon
be handed over to the states demanding their extradition. "Three
Egyptians who hold Bosnian citizenship are in prison [and] will soon be
extradited, most probably to Egypt, and their Bosnian citizenship has
been canceled," Besic said, adding that two persons holding Bosnian
passports have already been extradited to France as suspected
terrorists. He denied rumors that there were terrorist training camps
in Bosnia.
The government's tough line on suspected Islamic terrorists is
anything but uncontroversial. A number of lawyers have questioned the
interior minister's right to invalidate citizenship certificates of
those Islamic fighters who were members of the ABiH, except in cases
when they fraudulently claimed ABiH membership. Perhaps more worrying
are the threats of Islamic groups in Bosnia to retaliate if the
government goes ahead with its extradition plans.
IDENTITY CRISES
Problems arising from stolen or forged identities have been the main
obstacle to the investigations so far. When Said Hodzic, a resident of
Han Bila near Travnik, was arrested on 27 April, the public was not
informed. Hodzic was arrested on the basis of a "red" warrant issued by
Interpol in August 2000. He was tried in absentia in Paris, and
sentenced to five years in prison on 6 April this year for dealing in
false passports and other documents for Islamic militants in Canada,
Europe, and Turkey. Bosnian authorities extradited him to France this
summer, despite protests and threats from Islamic groups. Only then did
the federal Interior Ministry acknowledged the arrests of a number of
former members of the El Mujahid unit upon the arrest orders of France,
Egypt, and Croatia where they were wanted on various terrorism-related
charges. Established by Islamist groups from abroad and based in
central Bosnia, the El Mujahid unit fought on the side of Bosniak
Muslims as a part of the ABiH.
At the time of his arrest, Said Hodzic held Bosnian citizenship,
granted under the former Citizenship Law. After marrying a Bosnian, he
accepted her family name--his real name being Karim Said Atmani.
According to U.S. military sources in Bosnia, he is "an expert for
document counterfeiting for the Algerian Armed Islamic Group" usually
known under the French abbreviation GIA. In addition to France, Said
Atmani has been sought since December 1999 by U.S. and Canadian
prosecutors. Bosnian police had claimed he did not reside in Bosnia,
but according to the Stars and Stripes, a daily paper for U.S. troops
in Bosnia, "U.S. peacekeepers issued a bulletin around New Year's 2000
asking troops to keep an eye out for Atmani."
Together with Atmani, Ahmed Ressam was convicted on charges related to
terrorism, violence, and property destruction on 6 April in Paris. On
the same day, the federal court in Los Angeles found Ressam guilty of
attempted terrorist attacks on the millennium celebrations in the
United States. French investigative judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere appeared
as an expert witness at Ressam's trial in Los Angeles. Judge Bruguiere
identified Ressam as a member of the "upper echelons" of the GIA, and a
person connected to Osama bin Laden.
Judge Bruguiere confirmed the connection between Ressam and Atmani as
former roommates in Montreal, Canada. His statement served as key
evidence linking together the so-called Roubaix faction of the
Franco-Algerian Mujahedin movement that fought in Bosnia, with bin
Laden. Bin Laden himself is not known to have ever been in the Balkans.
Cases such as Atmani's give credence to the claims that convicted
terrorists frequently found shelter in Bosnia.
In the investigation, Judge Bruguiere spent some time in Zenica,
central Bosnia, in 1997. At his request, the cantonal court and police
carried out a number of inquiries and hearings. In addition to this
investigation, there was also a local investigation. Two members of the
Roubaix faction were tried and sentenced to 20 years in prison for
banditry. One of the convicts, Mouloud Boughelane, was extradited to
France on 1 June, 1999. The other person convicted, Lionel Dumont,
escaped from a Sarajevo prison five days before the scheduled
extradition. Dumont had found shelter in Bosnia after escaping the
shootout following a armed raid by French police on a faction safe
house in Roubaix. The Roubaix faction of Franco-Algerian Mujahedeens is
the only group that fought in Bosnia for which the international
officials have claimed direct links to bin Laden.
There are two other witness accounts of bin Laden's support for the
Mujahedin combatants in Bosnia. Both have originated from the witnesses
who agreed to testify under the U.S. government's witness protection
program at a New York trial following the attacks on U.S. embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998.
The year 1994 was probably crucial for the extension of bin Laden's
network to the Balkans. The crimes of genocide and ethnic cleansing
against Bosnian Muslims "provoked the anger of the Muslim world in
1994," according to David Ruhnke, the lawyer who represented Khalfana
Mohamed at the trial for the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania. The Muslim world responded by sending humanitarian,
financial, and military aid--and volunteers. It is believed that parts
of this movement later attempted to instigate and organize the Jihad,
roughly translated as "struggle" or "Holy War", in the areas inhabited
by ethnic Albanians, in Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania.
The largely passive Western attitude toward the genocide against
Bosniak Muslims became one of the leitmotifs of bin Laden's
"Declaration of War against Americans, Jews and Crusaders." Already in
the first lines of this writing, which was published in August 1996,
bin Laden recalls the Bosnian tragedy: "The world is witnessing all
this, and not only have they not responded to these evil and cruel
events, but they have also denied the right to the helpless people to
obtain the necessary weapons to defend themselves. All this is a public
conspiracy between the US and their allies, protected and excused by
the faithless United Nations." Bin Laden reminds in this statement "the
youth of Islam, who have fought in Afghanistan and Bosnia-Herzegovina"
that "the struggle is not over yet."
"This is not peace, this is humiliation. This is not peace, this is a
conspiracy to bring down Islam and destroy Muslims." The statement is
from the first post-war booklet by Imad el-Misri, one of the key
religious leaders of the El Mujahid unit. "Where were they for the past
three years, when Muslims were slaughtered and cities fell one after
another? The real goal of this peace is to stop Muslim conquests and
victories, and to extinguish the light of the Islamic sahva (awakening)
that started spreading all over the world. Muslims, be wary of this
peace and the aims of the West and America. This new peace is, in fact,
a new occupation," wrote el-Misri in 1996 in the introduction to his
booklet The Plot to Crush Islam and Destroy Muslims in the Most Recent
Times.
Imad el-Misri was arrested in Bosnia on 18 July this year upon an
Egyptian warrant. The Egyptian embassy in Sarajevo has rejected all
requests to reveal the nature of charges against him. El-Misri
possesses Bosnian documents in the name of Eslam Durmo, called Imad,
son of Ahmed and mother Hayam Hassan, born 18 October 1964 in Cairo.
After his marriage to a Bosnian woman, he adopted her family name
instead of his previous name, Eslam Ahmed Ahmed Farragala. El-Misri
became a father of three. Regardless of his Bosnian documents, the
district attorney's office and the Second District Court in Sarajevo
concluded on the basis of information provided by the Egyptian embassy
in Sarajevo that it had been proved "beyond reasonable doubt that the
real name of the suspect is Al Husseiny Helmy Arman Ahmed, that he was
born on 14 January 1960 in the town of Kene, and that he is a citizen
of Egypt." Therefore, el-Misri was suspected of the offense of "giving
false data".
BOSNIAN FOLLOWERS
After eight years of constant activity in central Bosnia and the
region of Sarajevo, the number of el-Misri's followers is estimated to
be in the hundreds, perhaps even thousands. Between 1992 and 1995, more
than two thousand Bosniaks went through a forty-day religious training
led by el-Misri, which was a precondition for admittance into the
El-Mujahid brigade. According to his supporters, el-Misri supervised 19
training sessions during the war, and six after the war. He also held
numerous lectures on behalf of the Active Islamic Youth, an
organization recruiting young Bosniak Muslims. So far, nobody has
claimed that el-Misri belongs to any international Islamic group.
Supporters of the Active Islamic Youth are leading a campaign for his
release from prison.
The case of Said Atmani is different. He was known as Hisham in
Bosnian Islamic circles. There are persistent claims that he is
connected to the GIA and the Roubaix faction, linked to bin Laden. A
group of Bosnian supporters of the London sheikh Abu Hamza el-Misri
threatened to retaliate following his arrest. After "the Bosnian
government had handed over a Mujahedin to France to be tried by the
French under secular laws," a Bosnian group called Supporters of
Shariah (SOS) declared on their websites
http://www.geocities.com/valabara and www.geocities.com/sos-bosna that
"we are begging Allah the Almighty to punish all those who participated
in imprisonment of the Mujahedeen, either at our hands or through some
other punishment. Amin! We are saying publicly that all of you who are
participating in imprisonment of the Mujahedeen will feel our
punishment on your skin and necks. Blood and martyrdom, as well as
imprisonment of any Mujahedeen will be avenged--Inshallah! Each and
every action to free the mujahedeen is allowed." The Bosnian faction of
the SOS was the only one to publish the translation of bin Laden's
Declaration of War into Bosnian.
It is impossible to understand bin Laden's Balkan ties if one simply
searches for the cells of his organization Al Qaida. This Arabic word,
meaning "base," was first used in Afghanistan in the eighties. It
essentially referred to bin Laden's training camps for Islamic
volunteers in Afghanistan. According to the New York indictment of bin
Laden for the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, Al
Qaida functions in two ways. It is an independent organization, but it
also works in cooperation with other terrorist organizations. The
Egyptian organizations, Islamic Jihad and El Gamaa Islamia (Islamic
Group), as well as numerous other Jihad factions, are mentioned as
groups functioning under the Al Qaida umbrella. But even Pakistani
groups, which were widely believed to have been sent to Bosnia by bin
Laden, used their own names in Bosnia.
Balkan countries haven't been spared from Islamist terrorist attacks.
Perhaps the best known one is the explosion of a car bomb in the
Croatian port of Rijeka. When Tala'at Fuad Qassem was arrested in
Zagreb in mid September 1995, El Gamaa Islamia issued a threat to
Croatia. A car bomb exploded in front of the police headquarters in
Rijeka on 20 October 1995. The explosion destroyed most of the
building, killing one and wounding 29 persons. El Gamaa Islamia claimed
responsibility a day later, announcing that it would further punish
Croatia if Qassem is extradited to Egypt where he had already been
sentenced to death by the court-martial in Alexandria in 1992. He had
resided as an asylum seeker in Denmark under a pseudonym. He reached
Zagreb in transit to Bosnia, with the intention of writing a book about
Bosnia. Six years later Abdullah Essindar, also a citizen of Bosnia,
was arrested in Zenica. The district attorney in Zenica claimed that he
was, in fact, Al Sharif Hassan Mahmud Saad, a citizen of Egypt.
Essindar claimed that there had been a misunderstanding because his
nickname was Sahar, while Croatia and Egypt were seeking extradition of
a man whose nickname was Sahr in connection with the car bomb explosion
in Rijeka, in September of 1995. On 20 September Interior Minister
Besic said that a person suspected of involvement in the Rijeka bombing
had been arrested and would soon be extradited to Croatia. The suspect
holds Bosnian citizenship.
The war crimes tribunal in The Hague is not likely to face the problem
of suspects' elusive identities. The Hague prosecutor is not planning
to bring to court any Mujahedin, according to an unnamed tribunal
source quoted in the New York Times of 2 September 2001. Instead, three
high ranking ABiH officers have been indicted and transferred to The
Hague for crimes against Croatian and Serb POWs and civilians in
Central Bosnia, which this investigation ascribes to members of the El
Mujahid unit. The officers had command responsibility for the El
Mujahid unit.
In the minds of Mujahedin supporters, "the July arrest of Sheikh
el-Misri, and the Hague indictments one week later" are a result of "a
secret operation of America and the Bosnian police, now under communist
control," according to Abu Hamza, a Mujahedin veteran of the Bosnian
war. The have frequently Islamists vowed to retaliate. Bin Laden may or
may not be directly connected to Islamist groups here. There is little
doubt though that his message is in the hearts of Islamic
fundamentalists in the Balkans.
Esad Hecimovic is a journalist with the Sarajevo Dani news magazine. He
has written extensively on Islamist groups in the Balkans.
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