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Terror Arrests Hailed As Proof Of Bosnia's Reliability

02 12 2005  A police swoop on a new batch of suspected Islamic militants garners Sarajevo international praise.
 
By Nidzara Ahmetasevic in Sarajevo (2-Dec-05)

"If they are guilty, they should be put on trial." So says Kerim, ayoung man whose beard and short pants proclaim him to be a member ofthe hard-line, Saudi Arabian-based Wahhabi movement.

Standing outside a Sarajevo mosque, where he sells Islamic literatureand materials on Chechnya and the Palestinian Intifada, he adds: "Theycan't be Muslims, because our religion forbids killing innocent people,especially women and children."

Kerim is talking about the latest terrorist suspectsrounded up by the Bosnian police in a drive to rid the mainlyMuslim Bosnian Federation of religious extremists who are threateningthe country's reputation and future.

The police have targeted such men since 2001, after the Al Qaedaassault on New York resulted in friendly Muslim governments comingunder heavy US pressure to crack down on extremists.

Lately, the arrests have gathered pace. In October, Bosnian policeseized two young men on suspicion of illegally possessing firearms - Mirsad Bektasevic, 19, a Swedish citizen originally from Serbia, andAbdul Kadir Cesuru, 18, a Denmark-based Turkish national.

On November 17, the police went on to arrest three others: BajroIkanovic, 20, and Amir Bajric, 18, whom the police linked toBektasevic. A third man, whose identity the police have not revealed,was arrested for illegal possession of 10kg of explosives.

The five men are reported to be part of an international terrorist networksuspected of planning attacks on Western embassies in Sarajevo, including on those of the United States and Britain.

The Bosnian police and the State Prosecutor in charge of handlingthe cases have declined to elaborate about the specific nature of thecharges.

In brief public statements, they have divulged only titbits ofinformation, rebuffing media queries with the standard phrases that an"investigation is in progress" and that "revealing information couldcompromise any further course of action."

While the public is not entirely happy about this approach,international officials have heaped praise on Bosnia's police fortaking action to nip potential terrorist threats in the bud.

After the first two arrests in October, High Representative PaddyAshdown said Bosnia had become "a reliable partner in the globalfight against terrorism".

Ashdown urged the local police to conduct a highly professionalinvestigation. "The investigation must not be hampered in any way, asterrorism is a global threat, while Bosnia has shown it is capable ofjoining the global front against it," he said.

Bosnian citizens - and visitors to Bosnia - have been implicatedbefore in international terrorist networks.

Islamic militants gained a foothold in the country during the 1992-5war, when the government of Alija Izetbegovic permitted so-called holywarriors, or Mujahedin - some of them veterans of the Afghan waragainst Soviet occupation - to filter in and form units in centralBosnia.

A 1996 report by Enrique Bernales Ballesteros, a UN Special Envoyon Human Rights, referred specifically to the problem posed by theseforeign mercenaries, saying Mujahedin warriors were fighting alongsideBosnian Muslims and citing the names of their units.(http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/e-cn4-1996-27.htm).

Many of these fighters left Bosnia shortly before or after the warended to join operations in other parts of the world. But some stayedand started families. A few adopted Bosnian citizenship.

The bulk of those who stayed after 1995 left the country after the 11September 2001 attacks. But when they moved elsewhere, it is believedthey held onto their Bosnian passports.

International representatives have called on the Bosnian authoritiesto review the citizenship status of these men.

The government agreed. Recently, the Council of Ministers set up acommission to investigate the grounds on which citizenship was grantedto 1,200 individuals of African and Asian origin.

While some experts still claim Bosnia is home to many "white Al-Qaedamembers" who are under instructions to act on command, the policedoubt any of the men they recently arrested actually belong to OsamaBin Laden's terror network.

In support of the claim that Al Qaeda is not active in Bosnia, policepoint to the fact that only one terrorist act has occurred heresince the end of the war, when Ahmed Zuhai Handala, a Syrian, helpedplant a car bomb in the Croat-populated district of Mostar in 1997.

The bomb caused no casualties, and Handala was arrested five yearslater, though not in Bosnia but in Yemen, on suspicion of belonging toan international terrorist network. Transferred to the US detentioncentre at Guantanamo Bay, he remains there still.

Another six Bosnian nationals are in Guantanamo, members of theso-called "Algerian group". The Bosnian police handed them over to theUS authorities three years ago after they were arrested on suspicionof planning terrorist attacks.

The case caused a controversy, and many human rights NGOs – local andinternational – protested against the way the extraditions went aheadin defiance of a ruling from the country's Constitutional Court, whichsaid there were no grounds for extradition.

Instead, the authorities bundled the men out of the country understrong pressure from the US government and its embassy in Sarajevo.

Bosnian passport holders have been linked to several terrorist attacksin Europe, most notoriously the bomb attacks in Madrid in March2004, which killed more than 190 people.

Their actions have embarrassed Bosnia's mainstream Islamic community andits chief, Ismet Ceric, who has frequently condemned terrorism andthose who support it.

Islamic community leaders also publicly disapprove of the Wahhabis in Bosnia, though they downplay significance of the movement. Ahmed Alibasic, a professor at the Sarajevo Islamic Sciences Faculty, says they "do not pose a problem to Bosnia".

Alibasic acknowledged that Arab humanitarian organisations have gainedinfluence over the community, but insisted that Bosnia's Islamicleaders remained "in full control of the situation".

"The Islamic community renounces violence, extremism and intoleranceand that is the way the majority of Bosnia's Muslims feel," Alibasicsaid. Most Wahhabis agree, saying their movement is being unfairlyidentified with terrorism.

Emir Picric, a former Mujahedin fighter, said his former Islamiccomrades from foreign lands had been "Useful during the war, as theyhelped defend Bosnia with their resources and their lives".

But he says that times have changed and that these same men"realistically became a liability after the war had ended".

Nidzara Ahmetasevic is a regular contributor to Balkan Insight based in Sarajevo.