Posted on 08/02/2003 7:52:02 AM PDT by Doctor13
SARAJEVO, Aug 1 (AFP) - Bosnian police have arrested an Egyptian national suspected of belonging to the banned Islamic extremist group Jamaa Islamiya, a border official said on Friday.
Travelling with his wife and three children, the suspect, identified only as J.A., was arrested Wednesday at the country's northern border with Croatia as he attempted to leave Bosnia with a forged Belgian passport, the official said.
"There are indications that he is a member of the Al Gama at Al Islamiya, terrorist organisation," another name for the banned Jamaa Islamiya extremist group, Slavisa Vukovic, deputy head of the border police service, told AFP.
The entire family has been detained in the border town of Orasje, where the couple is expected to be charged for the possession of the forged passport.
The prosecutor will also investigate the man's suspected membership of the armed Jamaa Islamiya group, which waged a series of attacks in Egypt in the 1980s and 1990s, Vukovic added.
Vukovic added that the man had held Bosnian citizenship in the past but that it was revoked in late 2001 during a crackdown on suspected terrorists following the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Bosnia came under close scrutiny in the aftermath of September 11, as hundreds of foreign Muslim volunteers had fought alongside Muslim-led troops during the country's 1992-95 war.
Bosnian authorities arrested several people suspected of terrorist links and deported them to the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Jamaa Islamiya, one of the main armed Islamic groups operating in Egypt, was responsible for the 1997 attack in Luxor, southern Egypt, which killed 58 German tourists and four Egyptians.
The group announced a formal end in 1999 to its violent campaign, launched along with other groups, to topple Egypt's secular regime, that left some 1, 300 people dead, including scores of tourists.
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