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Nine Bosnian officials have been indicted for illegally allowing hundreds of foreign Islamic fighters to gain Bosnian citizenship after the 1992-95 war. According to the police officials who announced the charges in Sarajevo on Wednesday, the abuses of power occurred between 1995 and 1997, when fighters of African and Asian origin, who had fought with local Muslim troops against Serb and Croat forces, were illegally allowed to become Bosnian citizens. The names and positions of the officials charged were not released.

Robert Cvrtak, spokesperson for the Federation Police Administration, signaled that more indictments are in the offing. "The case," Cvrtak declared, "is part of a wider probe into the naturalization of 741 Arabs who obtained Bosnian citizenship illegally." Report of the announcement appeared on the web site of the Bosnian news agency ONASA, and was translated into English by the BBC Monitoring International Reports ("Bosnian Officials Indicted for Granting Citizenship to Foreign Islamic Fighters," November 25, 2004). According to an official source, Bosnian prosecutors are preparing indictments against 100 of the foreigners whose Bosnian citizenships are expected to be revoked. The mujahideen who entered Bosnia during the war against the Serbs and Croats were required to leave the country under the Dayton peace agreement, yet many are known to have remained.

Related headland stories:

• "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Linked to Bosnian Islamists" (November 24, 2004) [Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the reported "mastermind" of the 9/11 attacks, obtained a Bosnian citizenship certificate in 1994 and a Bosnian passport soon thereafter.]
• "Bodansky: Al-Qaeda-Linked Terrorists Active in Bosnia" (October 28, 2004) [Yossef Bodansky, a noted terrorism expert, told the Serbian daily Glas Srpske that a terrorist network, answering to Osama bin Laden, is active in Bosnia-Hercegovina.]

Labels: al Qaeda, Al-Qa'idah, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, Bosnia, Croatia, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Serbia, Yossef Bodansky

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the reported "mastermind" of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, was integrally linked into the Bosnia al-Qaida terrorist hub. Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily reports today that extremely reliable Global Information System (GIS) sources have produced definitive evidence of the link ("Al-Qaida Leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's Bosnian Links Emerging," November 24, 2004).

Specifically, GIS sources reveal that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, born in Kuwait on October 22, 1966, was in Bosnia as a first member of the El-Mudzahid unit, and then, since 1996, he was a member of the Egyptian Islamist radical operations. He obtained a Bosnian citizenship certificate in 1994 (Sarajevo Police No. 09/2-204-108 dated April 30, 1994) and a Bosnian passport soon thereafter.

In 2003, Defense & Foreign Affairs/GIS reported several additional links between Bosnian officials and the Islamist terrorist network ("Bosnian Official Links With Terrorism, Including 9/11, Become Increasingly Apparent as Clinton, Clark Attempt to Justify Support of Bosnian Militants," Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS, September 17, 2003).

A key link between radical Islamists in the government of Bosnia-Herzogovina (B-H) and Islamist terrorists was Huso (later Hussein) Zivalj, B-H Ambassador to the U.N. during the September 11, 2001 attacks. Zivalj arrived in New York just before the attacks and left the U.N. post shortly thereafter. During his stay as B-H Ambassador to Vienna between 1992 and 1995, Zivalj approved a significant number of visas and passports to radical islamists of non-Bosnian origin. In 1995, a B-H passport was issued to Safet Catovic [Passport No. BH-46600], who has had many links to Islamist "charity" front groups funding terrorist organizations. Earlier, Zivalj had issued a Bosnia-Herzogovina passport to Osama bin Laden himself.

Additionally, five of the known 9/11 hijackers had direct links through and with Bosnia, and all were supported by Bosnian-linked Islamist "charities".

Why have these links between Bosnian Islamists and 9/11 not become prominent news? Defense & Foreign Affairs concludes on a troubling note:

It is also significant that, despite the fact that the US Government has had Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in custody for more than a year, there has been no mention of Bosnia's role in the September 11, 2001, attacks, despite the growing volume of evidence linking Bosnia to the attacks. There has been some suggestion that the linkage was an embarrassment to the US Government -- and particularly to the US Dept. of State -- which had been a significant source of support for the Bosnian Islamists during and after the Bosnian civil war.

Now that Condoleezza Rice is to be Secretary of State and Porter Goss is at the Central Intelligence Agency, one should be able to hope that any residual support within the U.S. Government for Bosnian Islamists can finally cease.

Labels: al Qaeda, Al-Qa'idah, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, Bosnia, Defense and Foreign Affairs Daily, Global Information System, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Kuwait