Posted on 02/01/2004 12:22:13 PM PST by Destro
Sun 1 Feb 2004
3:48pm (UK)
Al Qaida 'Active in Kosovo' Claim Serbs
"PA"
The head of Serbia-Montenegro’s military intelligence claimed today that Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida and other terrorist groups are present in the Balkans and planning to increase their activity there.
In an interview with the official Tanjug news agency, Colonel Momir Stojanovic also claimed that the ultimate aim of al Qaida and other extremist Islamic groups is to carve out an independent Muslim state in the Balkans.
“We have information that al Qaida has strongholds in Kosovo, northern Albania ... and that they are active in western Macedonia,” Stojanovic, the head of the Military Security Agency of Serbia-Montenegro’s army, said. All areas are heavily populated by ethnic Albanians, who are mostly Muslims.
“The strategic aim of the Muslim extremists in the area is to create an Islamic state in the Balkans,” which would include Muslim-dominated areas in the region, Stojanovic added.
There was no immediate comment to Stojanovic’s claims from UN-run Kosovo or Albania, but the Macedonian Defence Ministry said it had no evidence of any al Qaida on its territory.
Claims that Islamic terrorists are present in the Balkans have surfaced before.
Serbian officials have repeatedly said that ethnic Albanian nationalists have established close ties with radical Islamic groups and that extremist fighters fought Serb troops during the Kosovo war in 1998-99.
In neighbouring Bosnia, rumours have also surfaced of al Qaida activity, but the international peacekeepers stationed there since the end of the country’s 1992-1995 war have never found any such evidence.
During the Bosnian war, Serb leaders claimed they were fighting to keep Muslims from establishing an Islamic regime in the former Yugoslavia. Bosnian Muslim leaders dismissed those claims as absurd, arguing that their people are secular and European.
Stojanovic also predicted that terrorist activity in the Balkans, including Serbia-Montenegro, would increase in the ”upcoming period.”
The United States and its allies have warned in the past that international soldiers deployed in the Balkans could be attacked by al Qaida or other terrorist organisations targeting Western targets throughout the world.
However, there have been no major attacks or any other indication of terrorist activity so far in the Balkans, which is still recovering from wars in the 1990s.
Thousands of international troops, including US soldiers, have been deployed in Kosovo, Bosnia and Macedonia as part of international peacekeeping efforts.
Oh yeah, sucks to be you, that's how. = )
The bin Ladin network supports terrorists in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Tajikistan, Somalia, Yemen, and now Kosovo.
Destro, this is lame even for you. An alert "in the past" to look out for Al Qaeda "thoughout the world" doesn't have any more relation to Al Qaeda in the Balkans than truth does to your posts.
It hasn't happened in the Phillipines either, Mr. Tuesday, despite also a large American military presence and loads of even nastier Muslim insurgents directly linked to Jamal Islamia. How do you explain that? Perhaps it is because U.S. intelligence and security for our boys is second to none.
Who is "Destie"? You've got the wrong number.
"Two of the fighters who took part in defending Bosnian Muslims from Serbs and Croats in 1995 were young Saudis named Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar.They went on to play an organizing role in the Sept. 11 attacks and died on the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon."
That's what I would have thought, too. But I guess we're both wrong. Clearly, Serb intelligence is better. They have spotted all those Al Qaeda roaming around Kosovo, but our guys who are actually there haven't been able to find even one! And we've been looking for years!
Of course the Serbs must have captured dozens if not hundreds of Al Qaeda in that fighting in Kosovo a few years back. They were all over the place, right? Although maybe the reason they can't seem to produce even one Al Qaeda prisoner is that they were too busy doing other things--I mean, it takes a lot of effort to burn hundreds of villages, especially when you loot them first and then have to rob hundreds of thousands of refugees--exhausting work!
Probably a Muslim. Every Arab and Turk I know despise the Serbs and spout silly lies about the poor sweet Kosovars.
Stojanovic...headed the Yugoslav army intelligence service in Kosovo during the 1998-99 conflict. A witness at the war crimes trial of former president Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague has pointed to Stojanovic as the officer who had ordered a mass killing of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in reprisal for a murdered Serb officer.
Yes, "mass killings". Give me a break. 2100 bodies found in 5 years vs. tens of thousands in Iraq in 5 months.
Montag, you're wrong yet again. The Office of Missing Persons and Forensics (OMPF) for Kosovo put out a press release about a year ago on recovered bodies and numbers still missing. Excerpts from the OMPF report are below:
· Since 1999, 4019 bodies of victims of the [Kosovo] conflict have been recovered and approximately 2212 have been identified.
· According to the latest version of the Consolidated List of Missing Persons, 4233 persons are still reported as missing, of which 164 are considered dead (but the body has not yet been recovered). · According to the list, 3324 victims would be Albanian and 909 non-Albanians.
Apply the Albanian-Serb ratio of the missing to the dead and you get a total of around 6,000-7,000 dead Albanians. Not inconsiderable if you are an Albanian; especially since the proportional equivalent of that many deaths in the USA's population would be about 900,000-1,000,000.
Nice logic trail, too. Your response to court testimony of a Serb massacre is to talk about graves in Iraq.
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