Posted on 04/18/2006 1:31:45 PM PDT by Bokababe
His code name was Maximus, and he held secret meetings in a shabby room at the Banana City Hotel on the outskirts of Sarajevo.
Bosnian police put him under surveillance, and in a raid last fall on his apartment on Poligonska Street, authorities seized explosives, a suicide bomber belt and a videotape of masked men begging Allah's forgiveness for what they were about to do.
What they planned, investigators believe, was to blow up a European embassy. But compounding their concern, they say, was the ringleader's background: Maximus turned out to be Mirsad Bektasevic, a 19-year-old Swedish citizen of Serbian origin with ties to a senior al-Qaida operative.
Terrorists have been working to recruit non-Arab sympathizers — so-called "white Muslims" with Western features who theoretically could more easily blend into European cities and execute attacks — according to classified intelligence documents obtained by The Associated Press.
A 252-page confidential report jointly compiled by Croatian and U.S. intelligence on potentially dangerous Islamic groups in Bosnia suggests the recruitment drive may have begun as long as four years ago, when Arab militants ran up against tough post-9/11 security obstacles.
"They judge that it is high time that their job on this territory should be taken over by new local forces ... people who are born here and live here have an advantage which would make their job easier. By their appearance, they are less obvious," the report reads.
Arabs, it adds, "have become too obvious, which has made their job difficult."
Bosnia's minister of security, Barisa Colak, acknowledged the existence of the intelligence report but said authorities had no concrete evidence that recruitment efforts are widespread. There are no known cases of a Balkan "white Muslim" recruit being involved in an actual attack.
"Even so, we have to be extremely careful and serious and not miss anything," he told the AP.
Even if systematic recruitment has been occurring, citizens of ex-Yugoslavia need visas to travel to Western Europe or the United States — a complicated and time-consuming process.
Dragan Lukac, the deputy director of SIPA — Bosnia's equivalent of the FBI — said authorities are taking no chances. Undercover counterterrorism agents have placed dozens of suspects under 24-hour surveillance and the country is "very intensively" sharing information with the FBI, the CIA, Scotland Yard and other agencies, he said.
"Bosnia has become a breeding ground for terrorists, including some on international wanted lists. We can clearly say that," Lukac told the AP in an interview.
Some disaffected young Bosnians may be receptive to the terrorist message: After the U.S.-led military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, it was considered "almost fashionable" to spout extremist sentiment in public, Lukac said, especially among those "frustrated and influenced by ideology, Islamized through various extremist streams."
Authorities who arrested Bektasevic and several alleged associates last October tipped off police in Britain, who quickly arrested three suspected British Muslim accomplices. They also alerted authorities in Denmark, who took seven others into custody. Investigators say they since have established that Bektasevic maintained close ties to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq.
Since the 2001 attacks on the United States, Bosnia has deported dozens of Arabs and other foreign Muslims for suspected ties to terrorist groups or alleged involvement in dummy charities believed to have raised cash to bankroll attacks.
In February, the country launched an exhaustive review of all cases in which citizenship was granted to foreigners dating back to 1992 and vowed to deport any with suspected links to terrorism.
Police also confirmed they are keeping close tabs on dozens of mujahedeen — Islamic fighters who came to Bosnia to fight on the Muslim side in the 1992-95 war. Although most left for other conflicts in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq and elsewhere, some stayed and married local women.
The vast majority of Bosnia's Muslims rejects the mujahedeen's fiery brand of Islam. Yet young, restless men frustrated with 40 percent joblessness and angered by real or perceived insults to Islam can be open to hard-line dogma, the Prague-based think tank Transitions Online said in a recent report.
"A pool of potential white recruits carrying Bosnian or even Western passports would presumably be of great value to terrorists," it said, calling the Balkan country "a deeply traumatized society susceptible to extremism."
"Muslims are going through a very tempting time," conceded Mustafa Ceric, the leader of Bosnia's Islamic community. He insisted, however, that there was no stomach for extremist violence after years of devastating ethnic conflict.
"If we wanted terrorism, we had a chance to do so in the heat of our suffering, and we did not," he said in an interview.
NATO's top commander in Bosnia, U.S. Brig. Gen. Louis Weber, concurred in an interview, saying Bosnian Muslims overwhelmingly are moderate and secular, and the terror threat is fairly low because "there isn't a large community that would support that kind of activity here."
Although Ceric keeps close tabs on Bosnia's imams, the 6,500 European Union peacekeepers who now patrol Bosnia are one-tenth the number NATO deployed nationwide in 1995, meaning far fewer outside eyes and ears combing the country to disrupt any recruitment effort.
The U.S.-Croatian report says infiltration actually dates back long before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. It says Islamic militants with ties to al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations have been crisscrossing the Balkans for more than 15 years, financed in part with cash from narcotics smuggling and coming from Afghanistan and points further east via Turkey, Kosovo and Albania.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, evidence has emerged that extremists have been trying to carve out a beachhead in the Balkans. The region is home to 8 million Muslims, roughly a third of Europe's Islamic faithful, and arms and explosives are easily obtained in what Lukac calls "a kind of El Dorado" for criminals.
Several Islamic militants who fought in the former Yugoslavia went to Spain, bringing back new military skills and expertise as well as access to contacts throughout Europe, a Western diplomatic official with intimate knowledge of counterterrorism measures in Spain told the AP on condition of anonymity.
"Yugoslavia was a meeting point," he said.
Among the Islamic leaders Bosnian authorities are monitoring closely is Nezim Halilovic, chief mufti of the King Fahd Cultural Center. The mosque, one of dozens being built around Sarajevo with Saudi donations, can accommodate 5,000 people and is part of a $9 million complex that includes a library, a sports hall, restaurants and classrooms for studying Arabic and the Quran.
Its imam has repeatedly has been accused of using his sermons to preach violence in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Israel, Iraq and Kashmir. Nothing like that was heard at one of his recent noon prayer sermons; addressing throngs of heavily bearded men and burqa-clad women, he spoke proudly of "bringing Bosnian Muslims back to Islam."
Halilovic denies he is a radical and insisted Bektasevic and the others arrested last autumn were the victims of an elaborate setup.
"This is just a trick played on the Muslims," he said in an interview. "They were framed to bring the world's attention on Bosnia-Herzegovina as a 'terrorist country.' Europe and the whole world should not be afraid of Bosnian Muslims."
It's nice to be wanted.
Yes, and it is France's fault that some Muslim kids didn't obey police orders to stop and got themselves killed, so France deserves the millions of Muslim rioters over how many days?
And it is the Danish cartoonists fault that Moslems all over the ME went nuts and started killing each other over a bunch of stupid cartoons.
And it the US' fault for 9/11 because we support Israel from total anihilation by their Islamic neighbors.
I am sick of people blaming others for Muslim behavior.
You are right in that Bosnian Muslims "used to be" fun-loving, party animals when they were part of Yugoslavia. But they began to change first, based on the leadership of Alija Izetbegovic who stated:
"There can be no peace or coexistence between Islamic and non-Islamic institutions... The Islamic movement must and can take place as soon as it is... numerically strong enough, not only to destroy the non-Islamic one, but to build up a new Islamic one."
That's what started the war. Now, Bosnia is an Islamic haven where they sell snuff films of the beheading of Serbs on the street corners.
No other country does that to you -- you do that to yourself.
"Bosnian Muslims at generally not radical people. They love to drink, party and most do not cover their head even in Sarajevo. "
I can attest to the fact that they are not welcome in many Mosques in the US. The Arab Clerics do not trust them as most do not speak Arabic and are too white looking. They view them as potential spies also.
Hell of a mess...
W
By the way, before the Bosnian war, Iran was Bosnia's prime Islamic sponsor. So take your pick -- Iran or Saudi Arabia? Neither seems like a good choice to me.
Not confusing Bob when you consider the caliber of people occupying the seats of power in the west. Anything is for sale including their souls. They (western political and military leadership)have literally sold their souls to the devil/anti-Christ. It's going to take massive re-awakening on the part of the political mainstream and widespread upheaval/housecleaning of our political system including cancellation of immunities for our elitist traitors in government.
Thanks for the great link. It should be viewed by every adult young and old in the west.
If so then we need all the resources we can muster to identify these vermin. First we pull all resource from San Francisco since they make their own anti-American laws and can deal
with their own trash.
Next we start ignoring any democRAT advice and start eliminating all radical muslim safehouses and mullas.
Way past time to clean house.
Yes, just look up a dictionary definition of Caucasian:
http://www.bartleby.com/61/1/C0170100.html
ADJECTIVE: 1. Anthropology Of or being a major human racial classification traditionally distinguished by physical characteristics such as very light to brown skin pigmentation and straight to wavy or curly hair, and including peoples indigenous to Europe, northern Africa, western Asia, and India. No longer in scientific use. See Usage Note at race1. 2. Of or relating to the Caucasus region or its peoples, languages, or cultures. 3. Of or relating to a group of three language families spoken in the region of the Caucasus mountains, including Chechen, Abkhaz, and the Kartvelian languages.
NOUN: 1. Anthropology A member of the Caucasian racial classification. Not in scientific use. 2. A native or inhabitant of the Caucasus. 3. The Caucasian language family.
Stereotypically Semitic features are distinctively Caucasian, like bushy eyebrows and "hooked" nose.
Ditch the caps lock, Lion. It makes you come across as a screaming 2 year old
Maybe that's because he is...a screaming 2 year old that is.
There are no justifications for war crimes, but war crimes are about tactics, not about strategy. Izetbegovic wanted a Muslim Bosnia, no matter the cost -- and he got it. That was his strategy and his people paid dearly for it.
The statement that I posted to you on #22 are Izetbegovic's words in an article on the Young Muslims website --so how is that "revisionist"?. How is the "White Muslim"s story "revisionist"? How is the PBS Frontline "Son of al Qaida" show "revisionnist? Or what about this -- is it "revisionist":
http://www.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0,,91134-bosnia_p3705,00.html ?
It doesn't take the "vast majority" of a population to be radicals -- it only take a small minority who is well tolerated in their environment -- and that is what is happening in Bosnia.
"What's revisionist is the idea that the Serbs fought against some sort of emerging Saudi Arabian-style Taliban regime"
Who ever said that other than you? But Izetbegovic did demand a "Muslim Bosnia". And what in the hell did you think was going to happen from there? Did you think that ME Muslim patrons weren't going to show up & take over? Then you know nothing of Islam.
A multi-ethnic country (Yugoslavia) was cut up into its religious/ethnic parts and it polarized everyone. Nominal Muslims became radicalized, Croats revived their WWII flag and symbols and secular Yugoslav Serbs started religious flag-waiving. Yes, it became WWII continued.
But you seem to forget that Bosnia-Hercegovina has never ever been a country before, it has always been a territory. Izetbegovich and the West created a country that had never before existed -- and Serbs had always owned most of the land. Did you expect the indigenous Serbs who have lived there for the last thousand years to just lay down roll over and live under Islam --again?
What irritates me is that you and all the Bosnian Muslim apologists still seem to act like Bosnia belongs only to the Bosnian Muslims because you will it to be that way.
My relatives came from Hercegovina (Land of the Duke) four hundred years ago. When the Muslims decided to kill off all the Christian leaders, my family escaped down to Bay of Kotor in Montenegro and my great-great-(many greats) grandfather ultimately raised the Orthodox Christian flag in Hercegnovi (Duke's New Land), Montenegro. Our family name (of those who survived) is now spread from there up and down the Dalmatian Coast. Half of us are Catholic and half are Orthodox. Post WWI, my father came to the US to escape the endless cycle of wars over there.
So please don't give me a lesson on religious "ethnic cleansing". I am a product of it.
LMFAO.
Yep.
The same dad who named his kid after John Lennon and then ran off with another man.
If Al Quada is looking for white muslims, they really do have a sterotype to model.
I should have noted that specifically, alot of folks here can't tell the differance.
Bosnian police put him under surveillance, and in a raid last fall on his apartment on Poligonska Street, authorities seized explosives, a suicide bomber belt and a videotape of masked men begging Allah's forgiveness for what they were about to do.
I think they are more than handling there back yard
I tend to keep away from these threads, too many bad memories I served out there in Bosnia 1993 and again in 1994.
The problem is that on this subject passions are easily inflamed as most have there own very bad memories of what happened.
Tony
I could tell it was sarcasm.
Did Johnny Jihad ever make south park?
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