The FBI suspects that one of the terrorists in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon possessed a Bosnian passport
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On September 18, 2001, Sarajevo officials received a request from Interpol to investigate the identities of 19 terrorists who participated in the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. It is suspected that these terrorists belonged to Osama Bin Laden’s terrorist organization. After only two days, the BiH Foreign Ministry, stressing that the same request was sent to other countries as well, responded that there was no trace connecting any of the 19 terrorists to BiH, or with any citizen of BiH. “However, there is a suspicion that one of the individuals on the list possessed BiH citizenship, which puts us in a very awkward situation. We are currently checking another 400 identities, and Zlatko Lagumdzija has called for a meeting of the BiH Council of Ministers,” was the comment a source in the BiH Foreign Ministry made for Nacional. “I cannot confirm that this individual from the American list, who is suspected of having a BiH passport and of participating in the recent attacks, is named Amir. This is a suspicion of the intelligence agencies, which we still cannot confirm or deny. We cannot precisely establish which of the foreign citizens who came to BiH from various Arab and Islam states received BiH citizenship, because at that time, it was common that we did not know their real identities or where they were really coming from.” |
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| FBI Interested in Four Individuals | |||||
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The US knows that, contrary to the Dayton Accord, many members of the ul-Mujahidin stayed in BiH after the war and received that country’s citizenship. It is estimated that in 1996 and 1997, there were some 3500 members of that group on BiH territory. BiH state organs believe that close to that number of foreign citizens from Islamic countries were granted citizenship. Among them, the FBI know of some 40 members belonging to two terrorist organizations which were under the direct influence of Osama Bin Laden and which cooperated closely with him. These are two radical groups, the Egyptian Gamm’at al Islamiya and the Algerian Groupe Islamique Armee (GIA). Since the American investigators have established that members of both groups were involved in the recent attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon, it became necessary to check out whether or not the suspected individuals were still in any contact or connection with BiH. Both the Bosnian and American investigators are very interested in four individuals. All are former members of the ul-Mujahidin. Algerian citizens Lionel Dumont, Hamid Amich and Karim Said Atmani are also members of GIA. Ahmed Zuhair Handal is a member of Gamm’at Islamiya. Ahmed Zuhair Handal arrived in BiH from Sudan, and he is the main organizer of the car bomb which went off in Mostar in 1997. GIA members Atmani and Amich arrived in BiH from Canada in 1995 and received new BiH passports in Zenica in 1999. It has been established that Lionel Dumont, and six other individuals of Arab descent returned to the Zenica Canton in October 2000. |
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| Lionel Dumont | |||||
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Dumont’s presence has been connected to the planned action in the violent liberation of prisoner Karaj Kamil Bin Ali from Tunis, better known as Abu Hamza in the Zenica prison. Investigators in Mostar suspect that Abu Hamza, a member of the Gamm’at al Islamiya, participated in the September 1997 car bomb in Mostar. After he was arrested in Germany, and extradited to BiH, Abu Hamza was sentenced to nine years in prison, not for the car bombing, but for a series of other criminal acts which took place in the Zenica region. No one has stated why Dumont, who was known to be a distinguished members of GIA and wanted by Interpol, was not arrested together with his group when he arrived in the Zenica area. He arrived in BiH in 1995 on a French passport. Paris officials sought his extradition for terrorism, but without success. In 1997, Dumont killed a police officer in Zenica. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison, but he disappeared in October 1998 in a spectacular escape during his transfer to the Sarajevo prison. |
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| Butmir Airport | |||||
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In Sarajevo, the whereabouts of Ahmed Zuhair Handal are also unknown. Handal is a member of the ul-Mujahidin, who together with Ali Hamed Ubeid (a BiH citizen from Bahrain) and Saleh Nebil Ali Ali el Hil (known also as Abu Jemen), placed 4.5 kilograms of explosives, 40 kilograms of anti-tank mines and 15 kilograms of so-called red explosives in a parked car underneath a residential building in Mostar on September 19, 1997. Handal was tried in absence and sentenced to 12 years imprisonment. This investigation, with the possible identification of the mysterious Amir, a participant in Bin Laden’s attacks in New York and Washington, allegedly included another three individuals: Ahmed Ressam from Algiers, and Murat Yuruyuc and Lazgin Ergun from Turkey. The passports of the two Turkish men were seized with another 7 travel documents and 9 airplane tickets in Busovaca in January 2001, during a routine police check of those individuals who illegally entered BiH through Sarajevo’s ‘Butmir’ Airport. ‘Butmir’ Airport is BiH’s weakest entry point into the country, and illegal individuals with problematic pasts are constantly entering there. The fear and caution by the BiH government due to the newest revelations concerning the connections between the famous war heroes, ul-Mujahidin, the terrorism underground and Bin Laden’s two organizations are becoming increasingly obvious. The GIA member Abu Al Ma’ali from Algiers was the emir (commander) of the Order of the ul-Mujahidin during the time of Operation Hurricane 95 in the attack on Vozuci. His fate has remained unknown. There are claims that he was killed at Ozren in 1995, others that he was deported from BiH on a US request, and others still that claim he still lives in BiH, but with a new identity. Mehez Amdouni, former member of the ul-Mujahidin, and one of the closest collaborators with Bin Laden and one of the most wanted men, was arrested in 1999 at a Turkish airport. He was carrying a BiH passport. From jail, Amdouni stated that he was sorry the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II did not succeed during the papal visit to Sarajevo in 1996. Nacional has exclusive information, however, that only months ago, Karim Said Atmani was extradited to France from Zenica. Atmani, one of the most wanted GIA terrorists, was also included on the American list of individuals to be checked. Atmani is a Canadian citizen, who arrived in BiH in 1995 and was immediately granted BiH citizenship. After the dissolution of the ul-Mujahidin, he decided to stay in BiH. The French government suspects Atmani of a series of bombing attacks and bombs placed throughout Paris. All this comes to the conclusion that Izetbegovic’s government handed out thousands of passports and identification documents to individuals whose identities were not thoroughly checked. “If Bin Laden does not have a BiH passport, than he himself is the only one to blame! He should have asked for it on time, and he would have been granted one!” was the humorous comment made by Senad Avdic, editor-in-chief of Slobodna Bosna daily newspaper. |
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| Operation ‘Black Lion’ | |||||
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The ul-Mujahidin members began to come to BiH back in 1992, via Croatia and Herzegovina, using identity cards from humanitarian organizations. Most frequently, these phony humanitarian workers came through the Kuwaiti Rebirth of Islam Mission, the Saudi IGASSE; TWR and Saudi High Commission, the Egyptian Humanitarian Relief Agency and the Third World Agency. The Muwafaq Foundation is also a humanitarian organization which has excellent relations with the Army BiH. The most significant points of entry for the Mujahidin in Croatia were Split and Zagreb. In Split, that took place through the central office of Merhamet. In Zagreb, the central point was the mosque where the imam was Hasan Cengic, theologist, and later a member of the SDA presidency and a general in Army BiH. Cengic was the primary organizer for the arrival of Mujahidin to Croatia; he was the leader of the Visoko logistics center and the man via whom numerous donations reached BiH, particularly from Iran and Turkey. Virtually all those who entered were distributed in either the 7th Muslim Brigade or the Order of the ul-Mujahidin which were under the Army BiH 3rd Corps, centered in Zenica. As an independent unit of foreign volunteers, the ul-Mujahidin was registered on August 13, 1993, and mobilized under the command of BiH president Alija Izetbegovic, to whom the unit was directly responsible. The Order of the ul-Mujahidin was the best equipped unit in the entire 3rd Corps. The unit participated in the battles around Vitez, Novi Travnik and Guca Gore. The Mujahidin overtook the strong Serbian stronghold of Visoka Glava and Brod kod Teslic in only minutes. They were particularly effective on the Teslic battlefronts where they overtook the Serbian stronghold of Pisana Jelika, which for years had given Army BiH troubles. The commander of the 3rd Corps declared the ul-Mujahidin to be the best unit in 1994. They began their greatest victory with the Operation ‘Black Lion’ within the action ‘Hurricane 95’. In the countryside near Ozren in late May 1995, the unit needed only seven minutes to take Grede Podsijelovo and thus cut off the Serbian communication towards Vozuci. Army BiH experts had earlier believed that Grede Posijelovo could only be taken using air attacks. |
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| The Beginning of the Terrorism Story | |||||
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Army BiH wanted to force the Serbs out of Vozuci, and use the town to house some 10 to 15 thousand Bosnian refugees from Srebrenica and Zepa. In taking over Vozuci, the ul-Mujahidin succeeded in combining the 2nd and 3rd Corps of Army BiH, which were commanded by Sead Delic and Sakib Mahmuljin, who was later the deputy defense minister for the BiH Federation. Both of Mahmuljin’s predecessors in the position of 3rd Corps commander, Enver Hadzihasanovic and Muhamed Alagic, are now in The Hague. Likely the same fate awaits Mahmuljin, since the Serbs claim that he knew the ul-Mujahidin were beheading the Serbian soldiers they came across, something the Sarajevo newspapers have been writing about in detail in recent days. Some 2000 members of the ul-Mujahidin were injured in the war operations, while 500 were killed. Most killed were Arabs (some 400), while 35 were Turks, 10 Pakistani, 8 Afghanistani, 3 Malaysians and some 50 were unidentified. In spite of the commitments outlined in the Dayton Accord that all foreign troops, advisors, volunteers and paid soldiers were to leave the country within 30 days, which Izetbegovic promised Clinton would happen, the Order of the ul-Mujahidin continued to be stationed in Central Bosnia. Abu Al Ma’ali was replaced by Abu Hamza, but not the one who was jailed in Zenica. In early 1996, IFOR uncovered new Mujahidin camps (at Pogorelica near Fojnica, Sebesic), and it was established that the Mujahidin, in cooperation with Army BiH and the secret service AID, had undergone terrorist training. In the spring of 1996, the ul-Mujahidin was officially disbanded. And this is where the terrorism story begins. A great number of its members left BiH, while many others stayed behind as workers in humanitarian organization or instructors in military camps. They received BiH citizenship through marriage with BiH women. The ones who remained in BiH were primarily those who had entered as terrorists and were unable to return home to their own countries. Among the 2500 Mujahidin members who remained in BiH, there are still some 40 members of the Gamm’at al Islamiya and GIA in the Zenica region.  |