Petty crime and terrorism meet in Bosnia

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?id=16841 ^

[kronos77]

In an exclusive interview with ISN Security Watch, one of the men charged in Bosnia's first-ever terror case describes how his life of petty crime led him to mix with Muslim extremists.

By Anes Alic in Sarajevo for ISN Security Watch (26/10/06)

A former boxer, petty criminal and drug addict-turned-radical Muslim, Amir Bajric, a 28-year-old Bosnian from the Sarajevo suburb of Hadzici, never expected to find himself a key player in a terror plot against foreign installations in Bosnia.

But his decision to sell explosives to a group of Muslim extremists of various origins meeting in Bosnia has landed him two years in jail and death threats from his former Wahhabi colleagues.

Bajric's story, told in an exclusive interview with ISN Security Watch in early October, illustrates how the criminal underworld - whether petty criminals or organized crime kingpins - mix profit and principle.

In late October, after a month of surveillance, Bosnian Federation police in Sarajevo arrested a Swedish citizen of Serbian origin, Mirsad Bektasevic, and a Turkish national with Denmark residency, Cesur Abdulkadir.

They were arrested in a rented apartment with more than 20 kilograms of explosives, an arsenal of weapons, including a suicide bombers vest, and a videotape showing masked men asking God for forgiveness for what they were about to do. The tape also showed them planting bombs in a lemon, a tennis ball and chocolate eggs.

In December, police arrested three more men in the Sarajevo suburb of Hadzici. Senad Hasanovic and Amir Bajric are charged with weapons possession and supplying explosives. The third suspect, Bajro Ikanovic, is charged with terrorism, along with Bektasevic and Abdulkadir.

[kronos77]

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