The December 14, 1999, arrest of Algerian national Ahmet Ressemi at a U.S.-Canada border crossing in British Columbia – he was in a car full of nitroglycerin and bomb-making materials – was headline news in North America. Many theorized that Ressemi planned to blow up a major structure in the U.S. to start the new millenium.
The theorists could have saved themselves some time by taking a closer look at Ressemi’s past ties, especially those with terrorists trained in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where Ressemi fought as a mujahadeen, or an Islamic “holy warrior.”
It has been confirmed that Ahmet Ressemi had ties with Said Atmani, another terrorist who fought in the “El Mujahadeen” unit in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Canadian authorities deported Atmani back to Bosnia-Herzegovina on October 18, 1998, supposedly without knowing of his alleged participation in terrorist activities through Europe.
The NY Times, in it's "Magazine" edition on February 06, 2000 published that: "Last year, sources in Jordan say, the Mukhabarat, the intelligence service, alerted the C.I.A. to at least three plots by Bosnia-based Islamic terrorists to attack U.S. targets in Europe."
This is nothing new, since on December 24, 1995, Voice of America (VOA) reported that French security forces were searching for a number of Algerian terrorists, members of the notorious Group Islamic Army (GIA). The Algerians were suspects in a Paris Metro bombing which, among others, killed two Canadian tourists. The significant thread here is that the bombers were trained in Afghanistan and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Videotapes confiscated by French police confirmed this fact.
In Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the civil war lasted just over three years, the ties between the Islamic fundamentalist regime of Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic and known terrorists were exposed quickly. At the beginning of the war, Izetbegovic re-connected with his old friend and a member of ruling clique (National Islamic Front) in Sudan, Dr. Elfatih Hassanein-omal-Fatih.