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Europe
NATO denies reports al-Qaeda operating in Bosnia
2004-01-16
NATO’s new secretary-general denied on Thursday recent media reports that al Qaeda and other Islamic militant groups were present in Bosnia. "We have no firm evidence that international terrorists are operating, training or recruiting in Bosnia-Herzegovina," Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said during his first trip since taking the position last week.
What kind of mushy evidence do you have?
NATO leads the peacekeeping Stabilisation Force in Bosnia, which is being cut from 12,000 to between 7,000 and 8,000 troops and may be taken over by a European Union-led force next year. Some local and foreign media have reported the Balkan country has become a recruiting and training base for militants. Usually, these reports quote Bosnian Serb and Croat politicians who have been eager since the September 11 attacks on U.S. cities to blame "fundamentalist" Muslims for Bosnia’s war of the early 1990s. But some of the reports — alleging that many of hundreds of Islamic fighters who fought alongside Muslims in the Bosnian war form the backbone of militant organisations have been attributed to unnamed Western intelligence sources.
Actually, most of those claims are true. Al-Qaeda set up shop in the Balkans through and even had a force of 4,000 jihadis who formed the Kateebat Mujahideen Battalion of the Bosnian 3rd Army. Al-Haramain handled the cash flow and the group’s node in the Balkans was run out of Tirana by Ahmed Ibrahim al-Najjar until he was extradicted to Egypt in June 1998. Al-Qaeda had also planned to hit the US embassy in Albania on August 23, 1998.
Under strong U.S. pressure following the September 11 attacks, Bosnia cracked down on Islamic charities suspected of supporting terrorism. "If we had the information, we — us and Bosnia-Herzegovina agencies — have the responsibility to act on it, of course as part of the global campaign against terrorism," de Hoop Scheffer told a news conference.
Posted by:Dan Darling

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