Extremism lingers after Balkan wars Muslim fighters gained experience in Bosnia conflict
By Stephen J. Hedges Tribune staff reporter Published November 25, 2001 ZENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Inside a simple two-story home with mustard-colored walls and a single phone, police found few personal belongings as they searched Bansayah Belkacem's half of the block-and-spackle house three weeks ago. But officers found what they needed: a scrap of paper, folded into a book of Arabic text, containing a scribbled name and a 12-digit phone number in Afghanistan. The name and number belonged to Abu Zabaydah, who intelligence officials believe coordinates attacks for Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network. The note, along with an intercepted phone call, led to the arrest of Yemeni native Belkacem and five others who police say relayed to Zabaydah plans of a terrorist attack on a U.S. target, possibly the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo. Belkacem has denied any involvement in terrorism, but Bosnian officials are convinced they have uncovered a cell of Al Qaeda in Zenica, a gritty, industrial city 40 miles northwest of Sarajevo. The arrests, though, came only after increased pressure from the United States, NATO and European countries in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and suburban Washington. "At the top levels of government they realize that they have to have better security in this country," one Western diplomat said. "There are people coming in here the last few years who have found that Bosnia can be a staging ground for operations in Europe." The possible presence of Al Qaeda highlights a strain of Islamic militancy in Bosnia that can be traced to the use of Balkan battlefields as a training ground for Muslim fighters in the early 1990s. More than 1,000 Muslims came to Bosnia from Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan and other countries to fight alongside the majority Muslim Bosnian army in its ethnic war against the Serbs. Prosecutors believe Muslim veterans of the Balkan wars have since formed cells and have plotted crimes and terrorist attacks in the Middle East as well as in Italy, Belgium, France, Spain, England, Canada and the U.S. The training and dispatching of mujahedeen, or holy warriors, has been a primary activity of bin Laden-sponsored camps in Afghanistan and Sudan since the early 1990s. The idea was borrowed from a U.S. program in the 1980s to train Muslim fighters to battle Soviet troops that occupied Afghanistan. In radical mosques throughout the world, bin Laden loyalists have encouraged young Muslim men to take up the fight in places like Bosnia, Chechnya, Albania, Kosovo and Kashmir. Thousands have done so, either after training first in Afghanistan or going straight to the front. When peace came to Bosnia in 1995, many mujahedeen were forced to leave. But the war had given them experience in everything from weapons and explosives to close-quarters combat. Prosecutors say the former soldiers used Bosnian passports to take their new skills to several countries but still slip in and out of the Balkans with frustrating ease. "The Bosnia war is the best example of the mujahedeen expanding into new places," said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at St. Andrews University in Scotland. "After the war, a number of them stayed there, and these extreme elements accelerated the interconnectivity of the radical groups in Europe." Recent events caused shift Until recently, Bosnian officials did not want to rein in Muslim men who helped them fight a war, and they balked at tough border controls that would hamper lucrative smuggling enterprises. But a recent switch in leadership and the Sept. 11 attacks have changed that. "What the previous government has been doing is something that we won't stand for," said Tomislav Limov, acting interior minister of Bosnia-Herzegovina. "We're going to correct that." The Bosnian government has responded with rapid arrests, detentions, deportations and a show of force designed to assure the West that things have changed. Security at military and diplomatic facilities was immediately stepped up. The American and British Embassies were closed for several days in late October after officials determined that attacks were possible. Bosnian and NATO authorities have detained and questioned at least 20 people. Of those, three Egyptians have been deported, including two who face criminal charges for terrorist activities in Egypt. A Jordanian was sent to Amman, where he was jailed on suspicion of terrorist activity. Five Pakistanis who arrived in Sarajevo were deemed a security risk and deported two days later. Limov's agency has revoked the citizenship of 104 Arab residents and is reviewing others. He said the tighter anti-terrorism policies began in May, when the new government took power and immediately extradited three Algerian men to France, where the fugitives had long been wanted on terrorism charges. But deporting foreign mujahedeen does not necessarily thwart terrorist activities. For instance, two of eight men arrested in Spain two weeks ago on terrorism charges had fought in Bosnia. A Spanish investigative judge says those suspects may have been involved in the U.S. airliner hijackings that killed thousands. Still others with Bosnian war experience are suspected of attacks in the Middle East. One of those is London cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, who is wanted on kidnapping and terrorism charges in Yemen. He commanded a unit of foreign soldiers during the war. British authorities briefly detained him in 1999, but they have declined to deport him to Yemen, citing the lack of an extradition treaty. By 1999, Bosnia was under increased U.S. pressure to gain control of its mujahedeen, who were suspected of using their adopted country as a springboard for terrorist activities in Europe. In response, Bosnia deported Algerian Abu Maali, a fiery mujahedeen commander and the leader of 100 former soldiers in the northern town of Bocinja. Maali and his followers had turned the town into a center for an extremist Muslim movement that forced even Bosnian natives to dress and act according to strict Islamic doctrine. The government also dispersed the remaining mujahedeen into nearby mountain hamlets. Since then, the U.S. and European governments have encouraged Bosnia to deport more of the foreign fighters, without much luck. In fact, Western officials say that more extreme Muslims have come to Bosnia in the past two years, although loose immigration records make that difficult to verify. Charities being investigated At the same time, Bosnian officials and Western diplomats say Muslim charities that aided Bosnian citizens during the war have now aligned themselves with the remaining Muslim extremists. The charities strongly deny that. Nevertheless, the Bosnian government has launched an investigation of 20 such groups. "They help with travel documents, a car, a lack of money," the Western diplomat said. "It's mostly logistics." Last month, troops from the NATO Stabilization Force raided an office of one of the largest Islamic charities, the Saudi government-backed High Saudi Commission for Relief. The NATO force, seeing a possible threat to an SFOR facility or its troops, confiscated computer equipment and detained then released two Bosnian employees of the relief agency. One of the six men arrested in the alleged U.S. Embassy plot has also worked for the charity. The group's staff denies involvement with militant Muslims. "From the beginning of our work here, we have informed the Bosnian government about what we will be doing and what we are doing," said Fahd Alzakri, deputy director of the Islamic Cultural Center in Sarajevo, which runs the commission. "We strongly believe that the Bosnian government won't make mistakes towards us as SFOR made towards us." All of the six men arrested in the alleged plot against a U.S. target in Sarajevo have worked at Muslim charities. A Bosnian judge has given police until the end of this month to come up with enough evidence to charge the men in the scheme or they will be set free. In a sealed preliminary report examined by the Tribune, police say Bansayah Belkacem is the leader in the plot. Though Belkacem is listed in Bosnian immigration records as an agricultural worker, the report noted that he sometimes worked for the Islamic Balkan Center charity in Zenica. Countering report Belkacem is suspected of making calls to Afghanistan on a cellular phone, the report said. His attorney says Belkacem does not own and cannot afford a cell phone, adding that the number listed in the report has not been traced to a working, registered phone. But police do have the note that has what they believe was Zubaydah's number. Belkacem says he never saw the note before the police search and does not recognize the handwriting, which he told his lawyer looks to be in a woman's hand. The police report says that in addition to the note, the search yielded Algerian, Yemeni and Bosnian passports, and a set of Serbian citizenship papers that were blank but had an official stamp. Belkacem denied to police any involvement in Al Qaeda and said he knew bin Laden only from newspaper accounts. He also told police that, of the five other suspects, he knew only Saber Lahmar. Lahmar has worked twice for the High Saudi Commission for Relief. Police say he arrived in Bosnia from Medina, Saudi Arabia, in 1996 and used a document from the charity to gain residency status. The document claimed that Lahmar had been in Bosnia since March 17, 1993--during the war--which would have afforded him automatic citizenship, according to the police report. Alzakri said he did not know about the false documents and suggested they could have been forged by Lahmar, who served time for home invasion and assault. His wife, Emina Susic, said Lahmar is incapable of terrorist activity. But she noted that Lahmar told her little of what he did during the day. "He is a quiet man," she said. "He is actually very shy." 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