Bosnian Terrorist Build-Up Targets US Embassies

Bosnian Terrorist Build-Up Targets US Embassies
Defense & Foreign Affairs' Strategic Policy - November, 2004 / December, 2004

SOURCES WITHIN THE Islamist community in Bosnia-Herzegovina reported in October 2004 that a new team of Islamist intelligence operatives, working with the Islamist terrorist community, had entered Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, to monitor US embassies in Sarajevo and Zagreb.

The sources said that all, or almost all, of the operatives transited through Vienna, Austria, en route to Croatia, and that the Bosnian team entered Bosnia-Herzegovina from Croatia. The sources said that the members of the team had a "possible relationship with HizbAllah", which is controlled by the Iranian Government with the support of the Syrian Government. However, Defense & Foreign Affairs sources within HizbAllah said that any such relationship -- which could have occurred in training at an HizbAllah facility, for example -- would only have been possible at the direction of Iranian VEVAK (Ministry of Intelligence) officials; Lebanese HizbAllah officials were not permitted to recruit Sunni combatants without specific direction from Iranian officials.

The Bosnian sources said that the recent entry of mission-specific teams of foreign Islamist experts -- as distinct from Islamists entering Bosnia for training or as part of international terrorist logistics -- was not the first time that such teams had entered into Bosnia and Croatia. Such teams were tracked entering the countries in 1995 and 1996. In 1996, five Muslim commandos were captured in Croatia in an attempt to assassinate Fikret Abdic, a prominent businessman and politician who, as a secular Bosnian of Muslim background, had, in the early 1990s, opposed the civil war which SDA leader Alija Izetbegovic waged in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The five commandos (four men and one woman) who were captured in Croatia in 1996 had been chosen out of 1,400 candidates selected by Iranian Intelligence (VEVAK) officials. As well, all five were connected with AID (Agencija za Istrazivanje i Dokumentaciju BiH: Agency for Documentation and Investigation), the Bosnian Muslim intelligence service which is officially the intelligence service of the Bosnian Muslim-Croat Federation, but which, in fact, is linked with and responsive to the late Pres. Alija Izetbegovic's political party, the SDA (Party of Democratic Action).

Names and details of the new group of Islamist operatives which entered Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina were given in Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily of October 13, 2004.

SECTION: EN CLAIRE; A Monthly Report On Issues Of Strategic Significance; Pg. 3