Posted on 03/23/2002 1:28:30 PM PST by Spar
Al-Qaida Plot Revealed in Sarajevo
Sat Mar 23,10:48 AM ET
By ALEXANDAR S. DRAGICEVIC, Associated Press Writer
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) - Al-Qaida terrorists planned a devastating attack on Americans in Sarajevo after meeting in Bulgaria to identify European targets, a high-ranking Bosnian official said Saturday.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that intelligence reports on the meeting in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, prompted a special government session Thursday night to discuss threats against the U.S. Embassy and embassies of European countries. He did not name the countries.
At the Sofia meeting, members of al-Qaida decided that "in Sarajevo something will happen to Americans similar to New York last September," said the official. He did not say when the al-Qaida meeting was held or who attended.
The U.S. Embassy in Bosnia shut down to the public on Wednesday after receiving word of a possible terrorist threat. The embassy closed entirely on Friday.
U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Karen Williams declined to comment on the situation Saturday. Bosnian special police forces were seen around the compound along with normal U.S. security units.
In Sofia, Bulgaria's Foreign Ministry said it had received no information on such a meeting, either "from Bosnian authorities or from any other official sources." It promised an investigation if "this information proves to be serious."
On Tuesday, just a day before the U.S. Embassy received the threats, Bosnian police raided an Islamic charity, Bosnian Ideal Future, also known as Benevolentia International Foundation, seizing weapons, plans for making bombs, booby-traps and bogus passports.
On Friday, police announced they had arrested Munib Zahiragic, a Bosnian citizen and the head of the Bosnian chapter of the charity. Zahiragic is also a former member of the Bosnian Muslim secret police, AID.
Zahiragic was arrested on charges of espionage, which carries a maximum 10 years in prison. No details on whom he was supposed to be spying for were released.
As a part of the war on terrorism, Bosnia's government in January ordered an investigation into the work of foreign humanitarian agencies. Two weeks ago, investigators reported funds were missing from three Islamic charities, among them Benevolentia.
The United States recently froze the assets of Benevolentia, with head offices in Illinois and New Jersey.
The U.S. and British embassies were closed for several days in October because of terrorist threats. They reopened after local police arrested six naturalized Bosnians, all of them Algerian natives, suspected of plotting post-Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. interests in Bosnia and elsewhere.
The suspects were handed over to U.S. authorities in January, and now are being held at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Five of the six were employed as humanitarian aid workers; one was suspected of being Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s top lieutenant for Europe.
More than 1 million Muslims live in Bosnia, most of them native to the country but also including dozens of former Islamic fighters, or mujahedeen, who came mostly from the Middle East to fight on the Muslim side in the 1992-1995 war against the country's Serbs and Croats.
If the best you have to offer is racial slurs, I think I'll pass and find someone capable of a more intelligent debate.
All I have to say to you is you better not let your pro Islamic militant sentiments show again. Please wax poetic to us Americans on how good the Chechens are again.
I hope the delays you encounter in airports is not too much of a bother, a_Turk.
All I have to say to you is you better not let your pro Islamic militant sentiments show again. Please wax poetic to us Americans on how good the Chechens are again.I am neither pro-Islamic, nor militant. I am, however, pro-mankind and anti-ignorance. You feed on other's ignorance and use it to manipulate them. Just as you are trying to paint me now as an islamist.
You feed on other's ignorance and use it to manipulate them. Do I? You mean my posts are so convincing that the only explanation is that I am somehome manipulating people? I must have an awesome intel-prop background then!! You spent a lot of time on this thread, a_Turk. I have posted this article and links to them. Prove my links wrong with evidence of your own. I dare you.
Regarding the Chechens, Kosovo and Muslim Bosnia. Since I have been a member you supported and wanted America to support Chechen independence and you champion the Islamists of Bosnia and sympathize with the Albanians. All three movements with military links to al-Qaeda.
That speaks volumes.
bmp
Sounds like the threats were credible, too bad our intelligence couldn't anticipate and locate the terrorist meeting.
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