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Bosnian Wahhabis taken into custody
Bosnian security forces recently arrested the newly self-appointed leader of the country's radical Muslim Wahhabi movement for his involvement in a shooting in a village near the central Bosnian city of Zenica.

Tunisian-born Karray Kamel bin Ali, alias Abu Hamza, was arrested on 9 June, several hours after he and possibly three or four others attacked a house owned by Zijad Kovac and wounded three of his family members. The motive for the attack remains unclear.

In the car Abu Hamza was driving when he was arrested, police found a Kalashnikov used in the attack and a hand grenade. Of Abu Hamza's co-conspirators - who were also arrested and then released from custody pending a hearing - some were members of the local Wahhabi movement while others were common criminals, with prior convictions.

According to a police report, Abu Hamza denied involvement in the incident, saying that he was not in the village at the time of the attack and that "only Allah knows where he was."
"Lies! All lies!"
Abu Hamza gained Bosnian citizenship during the 1992-1995 war due to the fact that he fought with and was commander of the El-Mujahid unit and married a Bosnian woman. He became known to the Bosnian public after murdering Egyptian Hisham Diab, alias Abu Velid, in 1997 in Zenica. An investigation into the case later showed that the real Hisham Diab was still alive and an active member of an organization called "New Jihad." Diab was formerly a close associate of the radical Egyptian cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman, who is serving a life sentence for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The identity of the person Abu Hamza killed in Zenica remains unknown.

After managing to evade arrest for three years, Abu Hamza was finally captured in Germany in 2000 and deported to Bosnia, where he was sentenced to seven years in prison. He was released in January. After his release, he become an "advisor" to his former cellmate, Jusuf Barcic, a self-proclaimed Bosnian sheikh who led several raids on mosques in Sarajevo, Tuzla and Zenica, to the outrage of the local moderate Islamic community. Barcic also served a seven-month prison sentence for domestic violence.

When Barcic died in a mysterious car accident in early May, Abu Hamza assumed his role as an aggressive preacher calling for a return to traditional Islam, which is supported by the radical Wahhabis in Bosnia. Bosnian police now believe that it was Abu Hamza who organized previous incidents in local mosques, rather than their original suspect, Barcic.

Police still do not have a motive for the attack at the Kovac home. The Kovac family is not known to have any criminal connections or to be involved in any religious matters. The family owns a small sawmill in Zenica. However, Zijad Kovac is a distant relative of Zahid Kovac, a Zenica prosecutor at the time when Abu Hamza was tried for the murder of Abu Velid. Speaking to local media, prosecutor Zahid Kovac said he did not believe that he was the intended target, but did not exclude the possibility that the attackers had come to the wrong address.

Another theory put forward by police is that the attack was intended to end with the detainment of Abu Hamza in order to prolong his stay in Bosnia with a court case. Abu Hamza's Bosnian citizenship had been revoked and he was scheduled to be deported to his home country of Tunisia, where he was sentenced in absentia to 13 years in prison.
There's a motive.
With the attack on the Kovac home, Abu Hamza has secured his stay in Bosnia for at least one month, and possibly more, depending on the trial.

In mid-May, a Bosnian commission for citizenship revision revoked Abu Hamza's citizenship because of false identity information in his citizenship application. According to local media sources, Abu Hamza was supposed to be part of the first group to be deported to their countries of origin.

Since early 2006, the commission has revoked more than 400 citizenships, mostly of former fighters who came to Bosnia from Muslim countries during the war to fight on the Bosniak side.

According to police information, Abu Hamza was part of a 15-20 member group of Egypt's militant Gama'a al-Islamiyya that arrived in Zenica and Travnik in the summer of 1992. Living in Bosnia until 1998, he used several names such as El Akil Abdellah Ahmed, born in Yemen; Bega Kamel, born in Libya; and five other names with Yemeni and Libyan documents, each with different places of birth and dates. The identities and documents proved to be fake.

While serving his sentence, Abu Hamza saw several different criminal investigations launched against him, including one for the murder of a Bosnian Croat policeman and another for the torture of non-Muslim refugee returnees.

In 2001, Italy sent a request for his extradition, but Bosnian authorities refused because of Abu Hamza's Bosnian citizenship. A Bosnian police source close to the case said that Italy sought Abu Hamza's extradition for the suspected planning of suicide attacks in Italy, including one plot to kill the Pope during his visit to Bologna in September 1997.

According to local media speculation, after his citizenship was revoked, Abu Hamza managed to receive a "humanitarian" temporary residence permit for a one-year period by proving that he has a child in Bosnia.
Posted by: anonymous5089 2007-06-28
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=191957