Belgrade – A special Belgrade prosecutor for terrorism and organised crime on Tuesday ordered an investigation of five members of the fundamentalist Islamic Wahabi movement suspected of planning terrorist acts.
The prosecutor’s office said in a statement that police arrested Nedzad and Dzavid Bulic, Adis Muric and Enes Mujanovic from the southern Serbian town of Novi Pazar and Bajram Aslani from the nearby Kosovo town of Kosovska Mitrovica. Only ten days ago the prosecutors indicted another 15 members of the Wahabi movement who they said were also suspected of planning terrorist acts "with the same goal and in the same part of Serbian territory."
"But the investigation should show whether their activities were coordinated," the prosecutor's office statement said.
Although still a small group, Wahabis, are increasingly seen by officials and observers as a growing threat to the Balkans. Wahabism originated in the Middle East in the early 18th century and preaches a 'pure Islam'. It advocates religious intolerance towards other religious groups, including moderate Muslims. Wahabis first appeared in the Balkans during Bosnia's 1992-1995 civil war when thousands of mujahadeen fighters from Islamic countries came to fight on the side of local Muslims. Visibly identifiable by their beards and ankle-length trousers many have remained in the country since the war, and according to foreign intelligence sources have been indoctrinating local youths and even operating terrorist training camps.
Earlier this year, police arrested seven suspected militants in southern Serbia and uncovered a radical Islamist training camp and weapons cache. As part of a crackdown on radical Islamists, Serbian police in March raided a Wahabi training camp in a mountain near Novi Pazar, in Serbia's southern Sandjak region, populated predominantly by Muslims. Militants at the camp were planning an attack on local Muslims, according to Serbian security officials.
Police arrested four suspected Islamist militants during the raid, carried out on 17 March, and a further two on 19 March. They also discovered an underground arsenal of weapons at the secluded camp, including rocket-propelled grenades, 10 kilogrammes of plastic explosives and automatic assault rifles. Those arrested in the raid are all from Novi Pazar, the commercial center of the Sandzak region, which borders Serbia’s breakaway Muslim-majority province of Kosovo.
Tensions between Wahabis and mainstream Muslims have been simmering as Wahabis seek to gain influence in Bosnia-Heregovina and also in Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo. Several clashes have been reported in Bosnia and in Sandzak between Wahabis and moderate Muslims, including in a shootout in Novi Pazar last November in which several people were injured.
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.1346095576
WASHINGTON – Al-Qaeda continues to recruit Europeans for explosives training in Pakistan because Europeans can more easily enter the United States without a visa, the nation's top intelligence officer said Tuesday. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said European al-Qaeda recruits in the border region of Pakistan are being trained to use commercially available substances to make explosives, and they may be able to carry out an attack on U.S. territory.
McConnell also said he worried that Osama bin Laden's recent video and audio releases may be a signal to terrorist cells to carry out operations, he told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “That's unusual. He had been absent from airwaves over the last year. Our concern is that's a signal,” McConnell said. “It just causes us to be concerned and vigilant.”
Europeans are being recruited specifically because they generally do not need visas to enter the United States, he said. “Purposely recruiting an operative from Europe gives them an extra edge into getting an operative, or two or three, into the country with the ability to carry out an attack that might be reminiscent of 9/11,” he said.
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http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20070925-1226-terrorthreat.html
Algeria: Police uncover terrorist cell linked to al-Qaeda
25 Sept. 2007
Algiers - Algerian police have uncovered an alleged terrorist support group accused of aiding al-Qaeda in Lakhdariya, in the remote northern region of Cabilia. According to the Algerian daily, 'el-Khabar', police arrested seven people who reportedly provided money, food and medicine to the al-Qaeda cell hiding in the mountains of the region.
Investigations began after the arrest of a hunter who was discovered wandering in the woods of Lakhdariya. The man was reported to be carrying a load of medicines to terrorists operating on the border of Boumerdes province. The newspaper said during interrogations the man admitted taking the medicines to the leader of a local cell of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb called Khalidi. He had apparently been injured while trying to escape an army attack.
The other six members of a group were aged between 20 and 40 years old and were said to be trading goods to help the terrorists survive. The Lakhdariya al-Qaeda cell is the one allegedly responsible for last week's suicide attack in the town. Algeria's interior ministry said nine people, including an Italian and two French, were injured in the bombing. In an "audio statement" posted on the Internet, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb said one of its militants carried out the Lakhdariya attack with a car laden with "more than 250 kilos (550 pounds) of explosives." Lakhdaria lies some 75 km southeast of Algiers.
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.1345734052
Islamist 'leader' wants revolution
September 25, 2007
The mysterious sheik behind the Australian chapter of Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir has revealed the organisation's support for military coups and revolutions to overthrow non-Muslim governments worldwide. Ismail Al Wahwah, who was little known until last month when he was banned from a Hizb ut-Tahrir conference in Indonesia, spoke out on an Arabic radio program that revealed him as the "active member" of the group in Australia.
In an interview on SBS radio last month, he attacked the West's lack of values and backed the use of suicide bombings in Iraq and Palestine, even if they killed Australians. "I say any occupied people have the responsibility to defend their country," he told SBS's Arabic radio program. "The victim should not be asked how he is defending himself."
Sheik Wahwah is understood to be the unofficial leader of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Australia. The Australian has obtained the first pictures of the man widely known in the Muslim community as Abu Anas. Hizb ut-Tahrir's media spokesman, Wassim Doureihi, denied the sheik was the group's leader in Australia, saying Sheik Wahwah was a senior member and that his brother, Ashraf, a civil engineer at North Sydney Council, was the official leader. But Sheik Wahwah is sent to address senior members of the Islamic community in Sydney on behalf of Hizb ut-Tahrir, and he was Australia's representative for the Indonesian conference. On the radio program, he was introduced as the "active member" of the party - a statement he did not correct.
Hizb ut-Tahrir is a secretive organisation known as the Party of Islamic Liberation, which advocates the destruction of Western civilisation and the overthrow of governments and their replacement by Islamic rule. The group is banned in Europe, China and Saudi Arabia, but remains legal in Britain and Australia, actively pushing the idea of a Muslim rule.
Excerpted
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,22482616-949,00.html