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Of course we all know that there is no jihad activity in Bosnia, and that anyone who suggests otherwise is secretly an advocate of genocide, don't we? Don't we? Unfortunately for this prevailing dogma, reality keeps interfering. "Al-Qaeda man says terrorists safe in Bosnia," a translation of a German news article by Serbianna, April 20 (thanks to Maxwell): A Bosnian Muslim national under an alias Nihad C. gave an interview to a Vienna based weekly, The News, where he said that al-Qaeda terrorists are living safe in Bosnia’s capital Sarajevo but that he is in contact with the Western spy...

The genuine atrocities committed by the Milosevic regime have become an all-purpose excuse for many to ignore the growing influence of the jihad doctrine and Islamic supremacism in the Balkans, and to defame those who oppose the jihad in Bosnia, Kosovo, and the surrounding regions as supporters of fascism and genocide. This includes people who have dedicated their lives to the defense of the principles of non-establishment of religion and the equality of rights of all people before the law as cornerstones of a just society...

A year into the war, hundreds of men from other parts of the Muslim world had arrived in Bosnia. Many had come to train. Some - though we did not know it at the time - had already fought in Afghanistan. We Western reporters knew they were there. What we did not know is that they were already part of a nascent global jihad led by a group whose name was not yet familiar to us: al-Qaeda. We thought them a sideshow - irrelevant to the much more compelling dynamic of the war between actual Bosnians. .....

AL QAIDA-Bosnia’s Linkages to Al-Qaeda

ext of report by Bosnian edition of Croatian daily Vecernji list, on 11 December Dzevad Galijasevic - a controversial politician, chairman of the New Democratic Party in Bosnia and Hercegovina, and former mayor of the Maglaj Municipality - recently presented in Belgrade his new book, "The Era of Terrorism in Bosnia and Hercegovina". This is the final book in a trilogy of sorts that talks about the arrival of mujahidin in Bosnia-Hercegovina, exposes the organizations that support them, and details illegal as well as legal activities they are involved in. Galijasevic holds the view that Alija Izetbegovic's Islamic Declaration laid...

WASHINGTON -- John Schindler believes that Al-Qaeda was shaped as a modern terrorist organization during the war in Bosnia. Schindler, author of a book on terrorism, told CNN Al-Qaeda members were invited to Bosnia by that country’s leadership, where they set up training camps operational from 1992 until 1995. He claims Osama Bin Laden exploited the war in Bosnia for his own interests, and says there was “a worrying level of support” for the Mujahedin on the part of the U.S. administration of that time. RFE reported that the book looks into the way in which the Clinton administration cooperated...

Belgrade, 18 May (AKI) - A prominent Bosnian publicist and author has accused a Muslim member of the country's three-man state presidency, Haris Silajdzic, of fostering radical Islamism and of protecting Islamist terrorists connected with Al-Qaeda. Dzevad Galijasevic, author of a trilogy "Epitaph for Bosnia" and former mayor of central Bosnian town of Maglaj, said in an interview to Belgrade weekly NIN on Friday that Bosnia wasn't just a shelter, "but a base from which terrorists are being sent to western countries." Galijasevic, himself a Muslim, said the "Islamisation" of Bosnia didn't start during Bosnia's 1992-1995 civil war, when thousands...

Bosnia: Haven for Islamic radicals? By Nicholas Wood International Herald Tribune SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2005 SARAJEVO A police raid last month on an apartment near this city's airport uncovered evidence of an imminent suicide bombing, intensifying the fears of Western security services that Bosnia is becoming a haven for Islamic radicals. The raid, which was carried out after an extensive surveillance operation by the Bosnian police and Western intelligence services, turned up an arsenal of weapons in the apartment, including suicide vests, about 30 kilograms, or 65 pounds, of exploding bullets and high explosive, and a machine pistol. Investigators said...

Belgrade, 26 August (AKI) - The al-Qaeda terror network is active in Bosnia and the wider Balkans region, but is changing tactics and primarily fighting for the hearts and minds of the local Muslim population, according to a leading Serbian terrorism expert, Darko Trifunovic, a professor at Belgrade University's civil defence faculty. Training is now being conducted in small groups in elementary schools and sports halls, in the guise of social and sports activities, according to Trifunovic. “The greatest success of al-Qaeda in Bosnia is that it has managed to radicalise the local Muslim population and has even recruited several...

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...

The role of the Islamic religious Community in the war in former Yugoslavia The peculiarity of the war in former Yugoslavia (YU hereafter) cannot be understood without considering the role of the Islamic religious group in the period prior to it. However, the very mention of Islam can produce a confusing effect, because it is a very broad notion which implies many things and allows many different interpretations. It is a well-known that Muslims ruled parts of former YU and that some people, as a consequence, declared themselves members of that "nation" but later also stated publicly they were communist...

Evan Kohlmann's book on Al-Qaeda in Bosnia will, in all likelihood, become an unspoken taboo by the journalists and the media because it renders many of them idiots, particularly the ones who have invested a vast effort in manufacturing a romantic image of Bosnian Muslims struggling for "national" independence and, perhaps intentionally, ignoring the Bosnian hospitality to the al-Qaeda seeking to establish a stronghold in Europe. With only one brief big media mention, Kohlmann's Al-Qaeda's Jihad In Europe: The Afghan-Bosnian Network is already showing signs, much like the Cees Wiebes' book on spies in Bosnia, that any research on al-Qaeda...

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Hercegovina (AFP) - Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) is actively directing terrorist cells in the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia, a top US terrorism analyst told a local daily. Yossef Bodansky, director of the Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare of the US Congress, told the Glas Srpske daily that terrorists responsible for the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad last year were trained near the central Bosnian town of Zenica. "There is a terrorist network in Bosnia, composed of several well-trained and connected groups, which are directly or indirectly responsible to...

LINKS BETWEEN 9/11 (MUHAMAED ATTA) AND THE AL-QAEDA NETWORK IN BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA

Al-Qaida Leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s Bosnian Links Emerging

US Attacks Put Spotlight on Bosnia Muslim Community By Daria Sito-SucicGORNJA MAOCA, Bosnia (Reuters) - This idyllic Bosnian village seems a world away from the rubble of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But Muslims here say outsiders treat them with increased suspicion after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.``I have never fired a bullet, and they call me a terrorist,'' said Abdulah, a bearded 27-year-old who last year moved to the northern village of Gornja Maoca with his wife and three children for a life devoted to their religion.But some local people regard him and ...

US hunts Islamic militants in Bosnia By Harry de Quetteville in Sarajevo (Filed: 26/07/2004) American military intelligence and the CIA have deployed hundreds of officers in Bosnia to track suspected Islamic militants amid concern that the country has become a refuge, recruiting ground and cash conduit for international terrorism. Almost a decade after the end of the war in the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia has become a "one-stop shop" for Islamic militants heading from terrorist battlegrounds in Chechnya and Afghanistan to Iraq, according to European intelligence officials. With five months to go before European Union peacekeepers take over from Nato troops...

By John Crewdson, Tribune senior correspondent. Reporting and research assistance was provided by Drew Crosby in Madrid MADRID -- The most sweeping criminal indictment to arise thus far from the Sept. 11 attacks reflects a quiet but dramatic change in understanding by investigators here and across Europe of the terrorist organization known as Al Qaeda, and the international Islamic radical-terrorist network of which, they now agree, it is merely a part. As laid out in the indictment, the defendants' alleged activities--from arranging travel and providing introductions to procuring false documents and, especially, moving money--provide the first detailed look at one...

Ground-Breaking Srebrenica Guilty Plea By Emir SuljagicInstitute for War and Peace ReportingMay 2, 2003 Key suspect provides unprecedented and chilling inside account of the Bosnian Serb atrocity. In a watershed confession on May 6, former Bosnian Serb security officer Momir Nikolic pleaded guilty to crimes against humanity for his role in the 1995 killing of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men from Srebrenica. Dressed in a dark green suit, Nikolic appeared visibly disturbed as he appeared before the tribunal. He bit his lips in agitation as he offered his plea. In exchange for his admission of guilt, the prosecution...

<p>The Treasury Department said Monday that it would decline to provide the Senate with a list of Saudi individuals and organizations the federal government has investigated for possibly funding al-Qaida and other terrorist groups.</p> <p>The action was the second in two weeks to set the White House and Congress at odds over the Saudis and federal intelligence-gathering related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.</p>