The guy who's mission was to bomb LAX was a Moroccan. He went to France, then Canada and was arrested in when entering the US via Washington state.
A number of the extremists "would travel with impunity and conduct, plan and stage terrorist acts with impunity while hiding behind their Bosnian passports," the former official said.
In several instances, terrorists with links to Bosnia have launched actions against Western targets:
* An Algerian with Bosnian citizenship, described by one U.S. official as "a junior Osama bin Laden," tried to help smuggle explosives in 1998 to an Egyptian terrorist group plotting to destroy U.S. military installations in Germany. The shipment included military C-4 plastic explosives and blasting caps, the former U.S. official said. The CIA intercepted the shipment, foiling the attack.
* Another North African with Bosnian citizenship belonged to a terrorist cell in Montreal that conspired in the failed millennium plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport.
* One of Bin Laden top lieutenants--a Palestinian linked to major terrorist plots in Jordan, France and the United States--had operatives in Bosnia and was issued a Bosnian passport, according to U.S. officials. After the foiled plot against American bases in Germany, the U.S. suspended without public explanation a military aid program to Bosnia in 1999 in an attempt to force the deportation of the Algerian leader of the group, Abdelkader Mokhtari, also known as Abu el Maali.
Among those who Western intelligence sources say was granted Bosnian citizenship and passports was Abu Zubeida, one of Bin Laden's top lieutenants. Zubeida, a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip, was in charge of contacts with other Islamic terrorist networks and controlled admissions to terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. He arranged training for unsuccessful millennium bomb plots in Canada and Jordan and a recently foiled suicide attack on the U.S. Embassy in Paris, according to court records and investigative reports.
Zubeida also asked LAX bomb plot figure Ahmed Ressam to get blank Canadian passports that would allow other terrorists to infiltrate the United States, according to testimony from Ressam, who was convicted in the bomb plot and is cooperating with investigators.
Another terrorist with Bosnian credentials is Karim Said Atmani, a Moroccan who was Ressam's roommate in Montreal and who was in the group that attempted to bomb LAX, according to testimony. The Bosnian government arrested him in April, and Atmani was extradited to France, where he awaits sentencing on terrorism charges.
Beginning in 1992, as many as 4,000 volunteers from throughout North Africa, the Middle East and Europe came to Bosnia to fight Serbian and Croatian nationalists on behalf of fellow Muslims. They are known as the moujahedeen. A military analyst called them "pretty good fighters and certainly ruthless."
"I think the Muslims wouldn't have survived without this" help, Richard Holbrooke, the United States' former chief Balkans peace negotiator, said in a recent interview.