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."
A war of civilians, I would say, and as Bokababe said a continuation of the Second World war.
Easy enough to find arab moslem extremists with French, Dutch, German, Norwegian, etc passports and as long as they arent associated with a terror mosque etc, they are automatically admitted with only the visa they fill out on the aircraft.
What amazes me is how, despite the rhetoric and the utter simplicity of wreaking immense havoc in our open society the moslems have since 9/11 completely FAILED to take the battle to USA.
MORONS! MORONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yes,
Others may be of Arab origins with Swedish or Norweigan passports, but they are easy to spot when they move in next door or when they walk into a July 4th celebration with a backpack. But Bosnian Muslims look just like the rest of America, especially those with no Turkish blood. Many are as fair as your Irish nextdoor neightbors. In short, they blend in so that no one notices.
But as Tommy pointed out, Bosnian Muslims haven't been yet been involved in any terrorist actions that we know of. Although, according to this article, they were on their way to using a Moslem from Serbia (with a Swedish passport) to potentially bomb a Western embassy. Since the Saudis have been radicalizing a portion of the Bosnian Muslim population, I would not be surprised if they were used in the future.
THE SERBS WORK WITH OUR GUYS IN AFGANISTAN, so what???
BIG WOOP ON 100 BOSNIANS IN IRAQ.. big whoopee !! They probably help the insurgents!!
Bosnians need to leave the USA and get their mussie bu++s back to bosnia.
Who cares what you think?? The mussies maybe...BUT NOT ME!!
THE CROATIANS CARRIED OUT THE FIRST ETHNIC CLEANINGS IN YUGOSLAVIA DURING WWII AND STARTED IT UP AGAIN IN THE 1990S.
Why do you post on a conservative site when you support the failed policies of a LIBERAL democrat pig, clinton????
Oh, never mind. All bosnian mussies love clinton, except FEKRIC.
BTTT
I understand that you think that my ideas are based purely on "emotion", and you being an outsider to the conflict are more "objective". However this is not the case. I am an American who spent many years studying the history of the area, looking at all the conflicts of the last thousand years from many sides before the wars of the 1990's happened. I also spent time in Yugoslavia and could have predicted these wars long before they happened -- as did Milovan Djilas in the early 1980's.
Make no mistake about it, I think that Milosevic deserved a bullet between the eyes and an unmarked grave (for what he did do, not waht he didn't do), as did Tudjman and Izetbegovic (both of whom also had war crimes charges pending at the Hague when they died). And I know that there are far more who deserve the title "war criminal" than will ever be prosecuted. Many of those calling themselves "Serbs" learned to cross themselves fifteen minutes before they went on a killing spree in the name of "Serbdom". However, the Serbs are paying for what they did and seem to continue to pay, so if you set aside the tactics long enough to examine the politics and the strategy -- and most of all what it means to us in the West, there are a whole lot of things that simply do not add up.
1. There was a peace treaty signed in Lisbon before a single war shot was fired in Bosnia. What in the hell happened to that?
2. Why, knowing that Serbs were the single largest ethnic group in the former Yugoslavia and Yugoslavia was coming apart at the seams, were Serbs only dealt with on peacemeal basis by Europe and the US?
3. Why did the US back Operations Storm driving all the Serbs out of the Serb Krajina of Croatia, and yet the media barely mentioned a word of it?
4. Why are there several million refugges in Serbia today from all sides, Muslim, Croat, and Serb that we "ethnically cleansed), yet no one says a word about it?
5. What was in it for the West to create Moslem countries in Europe that never existed before -- and if the other countries could seceed from Yugoslavia, why isn't the Serb portion of Bosnia allowed to unite with Serbia if it chooses?
6. Why did the US State Department wait 60 years to grant the Legion of Merit Award to a long dead Draza Mihailovic (it was originally granted by Harry Truman and kept secret for 30 years, then finally given to Mihailovic's granddaughter last year by the Bush Administration, yet received no media attention whatever)?
7. Albanian Kosovo is known to be haven for drug-running, arms dealing and even supplied the Semtex for the London and Madrid bombings, yet they are about to take it away from Serbia and give it to the Albanians. Why?
Politically, from the standpoint of US and Western interests, none of this makes any sense.
In the metro areas where arabic moslems want to strike, they'd attract no attention among all the other swarthy runts, backpack or no backpack.
However, his policy on the Balkans may very well keep Kosovo from being "independent" for now. He is very, very concerned for the safety of NON-ALBANIANS there, especially the Christians!! He knows that Albanians are wild heathens who would murder all in their paths if given even half a chance!!
So, Kosovo's Decani monastery and certain other Church sites will be GUARDED from attack from YOUR ISLAMICS pals, the KLA piggys.
So, since you like clinton policies on the Balkans, so much... why not take your "pissed-off" self, over to the DU!! THEY would love your rude name over there. And they love it when Christians churches are destroyed. So Albanians in Kosovo are just their cup o' tea!!
So, there you go... bob's your uncle and Bush will help the Christians in Kosovo!!! He does not want Serbian Christians murdered on his watch!!
AND, you should stop acting like a grallatorial wading around in that liberal crappola you post.... in favor of ISLAMICS!!
That makes sense. Iranians are not Arab, they're Persian, and are likely more similar to the Bosnians than the Saudis would be.
During WWII, the Bosnian Moslems fell over themselves killing the Jews and even enlisted in the SS. I don't know what happened to them after centuries of co-existence, but that is what happened. The Sephardic population of Bosnia has been destroyed.
1. So let me get this straight -- Bosnia has no army, no arms, but declares independence and reneges on a Peace Treaty it has signed (see Wikipedia, the treaty was signed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izetbegovic) but expects no resistance from Serbs who do not want to be Islamicized or ruled by Islam? What kind of an idiot does that unless he expects some one else to come to his rescue? You don't declare war unless you are prepared to fight and have the means to do it. In fact, the Serbs always had the arms and means to roll from one end of Bosnia to the other completely flattening any resistance from the locals including those in Sarajevo in a matter of months if they so chose. Instead, they played "a holding war" -- always a losing proposition (remember Vietnam -- with the land that Serbs had always owned and even successfully made a deal with Muslim leader Fikret Abdic. The West had a real chance to back him and end the war, but we didn't. Clinton and the West wanted a Muslim Bosnia with it's current borders.
2. Bull. You are putting something that was "after the fact" "before the fact". Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991 triggering a civil war and Germany recognized Croatia's independence almost immediatley. At the time, the premier of Yugoslavia was not Milosevic, but a Croat named Ante Markovic, and what ever was done was not done by or in the name of "Serbs and Serbia", but was done in the name of holding the rest of "Yugoslavia" together. No provisions were made or even attempted by the West to accomodate the Serbs living in that territory for the last 500 years. It was apparent that Yugoslavia was coming apart, but no attempt was made to deal with the Serbs in Croatia, Bosnia, or Kosovo at the time, although the unraveling was apparent to all concerned even back then.
3. In fact, the US helped Croatia drive the remaining Krajina Serbs out of Croatia the same summer that the word "Srebrenica" never left the front pages of the newspaper (coincidence? I don't think so.). That offensive, Operation Storm/Flash, herded thousands of completely unarmed old people and villagers out of Croatia after they had given up their arms to the UN. Clinton backed the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Croatia.
4. Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, there are literally millions of Serb refugees who have been "ethnically cleansed" from everywhere in Yugoslavia and herded onto "a reservation" called Serbia -- all in the name of "preventing ethnic cleansing". It was a hoax then and it is still a hoax to anyone with an eye for the big picture.
5. This was a "no-win" scenario from the very beginning for Serbs. Amazing what people will do when you kill their country, destroy their homes and families and they have absolutely nothing to lose. I know, you only see that justification for Bosnian Muslims, but it works all around.
6.Because we lied about what happened in Yugoslavia 60 years ago, when we put Tito in power and we are lying now. No Brit should bitch about "Yugo communists" -- Winston Chrurchill gave Yugo to Tito and communism. When someone complained that he was handing Yugoslavia to the communists, he remarked "Do you intend to live there? Neither do I". Bush was the first to have the balls admit it, by finally giving the award that was 60 years overdue.
7. See the film "The Brooklyn Connection" and you will see how Kosovo was bought from the Democrats for $30M by an illegal Kosovo Albanian who snuck into the US in the trunk of a cadillac via Mexico. There is no parsing about it. There is Florin Krasniqi handing checks to Democratic politicians at a convention and getting photo ops with Wesley Clark and Richard Holbrook saying "Come here with your KLA" to them, and they join him for the phot.
According to you, Serbs are scum, have no rights -- and when they defend themselves, they are even worse scum with no rights who deserve what they get. You are pragmatic when it suits you and idealistic when it suits you. Must be fun to justify who you chose and condemn who you chose -- almost like playing God, isn't it?
Yes, the Bosnian Muslim WWII Nazi forces were called The Handzar Division and they wanted to rid the world of "Serb and Jew scum". What Tommy the Brit isn't telling you is that Alija Izetbegovic (President of Bosnia during the recent wars) was part of the Handzar Division during WWII. See the Wikipedia link on my last post re Lisbon agreement -- it is a bio of Izetbegovic.
According to a 1993 Daily Telegraph article reprinted here: http://www.pogledi.co.yu/izetbegovic/articles/2-1993.php that Division was revived during the Bosnian war with Bosnian Muslim and Albanians onboard.
The only thing that links all of these groups in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, along with Germany(who prematurely recognized Croatia) is their Nazi allegiance during WWII. Was it any wonder that these wars in the 1990's became "WWII continued"?
The only difference is that time the US and Britain, under Clinton and Blair, switched sides.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.