Posted on 08/23/2005 2:33:17 PM PDT by joan
Banjaluka, 23 August (AKI) - Al-Qaeda is changing tactics, but is still operating disguised training camps in Bosnia, local daily Nezavisne novine alleged on Tuesday, quoting the American Cybercast News Service (CNS). Training camps that operated during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war had been closed down, but new ones have been opened under the cover of youth centres, the paper said.
The new camps were operated by mujahadeen from Islamic countries with military experience, said Ivan Colman, an American expert on terrorism quoted by the paper. “They take young people to the hills and train them for Jihad,” said Colman. “Sounds crazy, but they have realised that it is difficult to trace such camps,” he added.
The aim was not to organise permanent camps for terrorist actions in which “very few Bosnian youths were interested,” but to create a network of mobile cells which are not easy to track, according to Colman.
Al-Qaeda cells in Bosnia were set up in the nineties by Aiman al Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's right-hand man, who twice visited Bosnia in the nineties, said another expert on terrorism, Christopher Brown, quoted by the paper. Thousands of mujahadeen from Islamic countries fought on the side of local Muslims during the Bosnian civil war, and several hundred are believed to have remained in the country.
Al-Qaeda terrorists, after serving jail terms in Western countries, now head for Bosnia where they join training camps and have access to arms and illegal Islamic “humanitarian funds,” CNS claimed. It said a Moroccan, Karim Said Atmani, had returned to Bosnia after having served a jail term in France, and so did his Algerian colleague Abu el Maali.
But according to Mark Atila Hoare, a researcher from the Cambridge University, the stories about training camps in Bosnia were exaggerated. “No Bosnian Muslims participated in terrorist acts,” Hoare was quoted as saying. “Al-Qaeda had tried but hasn’t succeeded in turning Bosnia into a jihadist base, because the mild version of Islam in Bosnia is not suitable for Islamists”, he concluded.
On Friday, police in neighbouring Serbia announced they had arrested a Moroccan, Abdelmajid Bouchar, who is a suspect in the March 2004 Madrid bombing that killed 191 people. Bouchar's presence could suggest that Al-Qaeda terrorists are active in the region and might be seeking a haven in the Balkans.
bump
The Clinton Legacy lives on...
Model for the conquest of Europe.
Are we sure they aren't just weather balloon stations?
So the camps moved from Bosnia to Iraq?
The World is going to become a bloody place. Bosnian terror camps are the stepping stepping stone to The forces that should suppress the Islamists aren't there. The devils who want the Islamists to bring down their ememies are hard at work.
In the Bush plan, I wonder if the "temporay guest workers" are suppose to become the fodder to fight the coming war that Americans won't. Just wondering.
So Islamists come from all over the world to Bosnia to study the weather and forecasting techniques? Does Bosnia specialize in weather reporting and forecasting techniques - have never heard of any scientists or weather reporters saying that Bosnia is the place to be for this.
Should've put the sarcasm tag on there. Think mobile biological weapons labs...
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