BOSNIAN OFFICIALS INDICTED FOR GRANTING CITIZENSHIP TO FOREIGN ISLAMIC FIGHTERS
BBC Monitoring International Reports - November 25, 2004

Text of report in English by Bosnian news agency Onasa web site.

Sarajevo, 24 November: Nine Bosnian officials have been charged with corruption for allowing hundreds of foreign Islamic fighters to illegally gain citizenship after the country's 1992-95 war, police and officials said Wednesday (24 November).

Police said the alleged abuse of power occurred between 1995 and 1997, when fighters of African and Asian origin were illegally allowed to become Bosnian citizens after fighting with local Muslim troops against Serb and Croat forces.

The names and positions of the officials were not released.

"The case is part of a wider probe into the naturalization of 741 Arabs who obtained Bosnian citizenship illegally," said Robert Cvrtak, a police spokesman.

Bosnian prosecutors are preparing indictments against 100 of the foreigners and their Bosnian citizenship is expected to be revoked, an official source said.

An unknown number of foreign so-called mujahedeen, or holy warriors, entered Bosnia during the war to fight alongside local Muslim troops. They were supposed to leave under the Dayton peace agreement but many are known to have stayed.

A US counter-terrorism expert recently told a Bosnian Serb newspaper that Al-Qa'idah leader Usamah Bin-Ladin was actively directing terrorist cells in the former Yugoslav republic.

Yossef Bodansky, director of the Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare of the US Congress, told the Glas Srpske daily that terrorists responsible for the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad last year were trained near the central Bosnian town of Zenica.

"There is a terrorist network in Bosnia, composed of several well-trained and connected groups, which are directly or indirectly responsible to... (ellipsis as received) Usamah Bin-Ladin," he was quoted as saying in the Serbian-language paper last month.

He said the cells were using Bosnia as a training ground and a gateway to send terrorists to western Europe or to hide them on their way to the east if they were on the run.

Sfor (Stabilization Force) however said there was "no firm evidence of any terrorist organization either operating or training in this country".
 

Source: Onasa news agency web site, Sarajevo, in English 24 Nov 04

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