Bosnian TV explores Wahhabi links in foiled US embassy attack in Vienna
BBC Monitoring Europe (Political) - October 9, 2007, Tuesday

Excerpt from report by Bosnia-Hercegovina Federation TV on 8 October

[Host Bakir Hadziomerovic] Last week two Bosnia-Hercegovina nationals tried to blow up the US embassy in Vienna. 60 Minutes [programme] has investigated all details of the event. Damir Kaletovic has a report:

[Reporter] [Passage omitted: reporter mentions February 2007 case in which Austrian police broke an organized drug-smuggling group headed by a Bosnian] Seven months later, a Bosnia-Hercegovina national was arrested while attempting to enter the US embassy with a backpack containing hand grenades, explosive and nails, while another one was detained on suspicion of inciting his fellow-countryman to an act with terrorist intentions. We can already say with certainty that Bosnia-Hercegovina will rank high in the year-end black statistics of Austrian political, police/judiciary and diplomatic authorities, regardless of whether the current intensive investigation conducted by the Austrian prosecutor's office will prove that B-H [Bosnia-Hercegovina] nationals Asim Cejvanovic and Mehmed Dzudzic planned to blow up the US embassy in Vienna.

The fact that no detonators were found on the hand grenades and that the 42-year-old Cejvanovic is a mental patient who has repeatedly sought professional medical help during the several years that he has lived in Austria represent a big problem for the Austrian investigating authorities in proving that this was a planned terrorist attack on the embassy. Cejvanovic is currently undergoing psychiatric check-ups.

At the same time, the 34-year-old Tuzla native Mehmed Dzudzic is in detention in the building you are watching right now. He ended up here after Cejvanovic asserted that he had carried out his adventure of last week following Dzudzic's order. [Passage omitted: spokesman for Austrian public attorney says they still do not know if Cejvanovic wanted to detonate the explosive or hand it over to someone at the embassy, adding that the investigation may take weeks, if not months] Cejvanovic and Dzudzic have lived in Austria for some time now; they obtained their B-H passports - Dzudzic in 2003, Cejvanovic last year - through a legal procedure at our embassy in Vienna. [Passage omitted: reporter explains the two met in the town where they both lived, Tulln, 22 km outside Vienna; reporter visits town, rings at Cejvanovic's door] The house has been abandoned since Cejvanovic's arrest and a subsequent raid by the Austrian police. During the raid, several kilos of explosive were found; it has not yet been established how it was obtained. [Passage omitted: at Dzudzic's apartment, a surly female voice on the Intercom refuses to give statements]

Beside their acquaintance in Tulln, Cejvanovic and Dzudzic had one more place in common: Vienna's Tevhid masjid [Arabic for mosque]. The masjid is located in Vienna's 12th Bezirk [quarter] and is controlled by the radical Wahhabi leader, Hafiz [person who memorized the Koran by heart] Muhamed Porca. According to reliable sources, unlike Cejvanovic, Dzudzic frequently visited the masjid. Precisely this fact has attracted the attention of the Austrian investigators, who are now trying to examine the links and contacts of Hafiz Porca with Mehmed Dzudzic.

[Gerhard Jarosch, spokesman for Austrian public attorney, in English with translation into vernacular superimposed] We do not find very often in Austria weapons like these, especially hand grenades and explosive such as Semtex. But it does happen from time to time. It is very difficult to find out where it came from. Sometimes they originate from the former Yugoslav wars, sometimes they come from other sources.

[Reporter] The information that the explosive Semtex was found on Cejvanovic makes the whole situation much more serious. Talking to those who know more about terrorist actions worldwide, we have learnt that Semtex is among the most sought-after and most valued explosives in the preparation and conduct of terrorist attacks. All the more so, because for some time, irrespective of the security and control systems used, it was almost impossible to detect. This fact has certainly contributed to the US embassy actively joining the investigation. We have learnt from unofficial sources that the Americans have already sent their investigators to Vienna and that they are seriously considering transferring the entire case to their own judiciary and police.

The latest Vienna incident has once again raised the issue of the operation of the Wahhabi movement in Vienna, behind which, as we have already mentioned, stands Hafiz Muhamed Porca. Porca arrived in Austria in 1993 to serve as an imam. From the moment he was denied a job at Sarajevo's Faculty of Islamic Studies on his return to B-H, Porca started implementing the idea of creating an Islamic community parallel to the official one lead by Reis Mustafa effendi Ceric. Porca has not succeeded in this but he has managed to strengthen the Wahhabi movement to an extent where no-one can control it any longer. This outcome took time to achieve, but, owing above all to the inertness of the B-H Islamic Community, Porca and the like-minded Adnan Buzar, Senad Podojak and Jusuf Barcic, who recently died [in a traffic accident], had ample time. The Islamic Community of Bosnia-Hercegovina, headed by Reis Ceric, has all these years silently watched the increasingly pronounced Wahhabi influence, both in and outside Bosnia. This above all concerns the city of Vienna, in which a dozen of picturesque characters operate.

[Irfan Buzar, head of Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) Islamic Community in Austria] At one point, believe me, we alerted the Islamic Community in Bosnia-Hercegovina as well. But no-one wanted to react at the time. Only now when we are having serious problems [changes thought] Here I will refer to a popular saying according to which if someone does not want to have a child, they should see to it that it does not get born. But once a child is born, we have to nurse it. Now that these problems have arisen, there are attempts to blame it all on Vienna, which I totally disagree with.

[Reporter] Unlike the Islamic Community of Bosnia-Hercegovina, the Islamic Community of Bosniaks in Austria, as well as the Islamic Community of Muslims in Austria, have unequivocally disassociated themselves from the Wahhabi movement, whose members - they believe - are doing unprecedented damage to all Muslims in Austria. The head of the Austrian Islamic Community has confirmed this talking to 60 Minutes. [Passage omitted: head of Austrian Islamic Community Anas Schakfeh praises good inter-religious dialogue in the country, notes damage done by security incidents such as the recent foiled attack on US embassy]

[Buzar] We are desperate because of what has happened, but we are not burdened by it because those people did not come from the Islamic Community of Bosniaks in Austria. We Bosniaks publicly disassociate ourselves from what you called extreme groups because we Bosniaks have our traditional Islam.

[Passage omitted: reporter quotes from interview given by Reis Ceric to Vienna-based weekly News three months ago, in which Ceric warns of radical Islamic groups in Austria, asserting that Bosnian Islamic Community is keeping similar groups under control; reporter challenges this statement, quoting example of aggressive attempts by late Wahhabi leader Barcic to use premises of Sarajevo's Careva mosque] To make things even worse in terms of the ullema's [Islamic scholars] lack of principles, in addition to a myriad of characters from Vienna - among whom, we have heard, was also the currently detained Mehmed Dzudzic - the funeral of Jusuf Barcic, who died in a traffic accident in March this year, was attended by Tuzla Mufti Husein effendi Kavazovic, a gesture that best illustrated the role of the Islamic Community in the alleged settling of accounts with the Wahhabis. Consequences of this policy, or rather helplessness, are clearly evident, among other things, in the operation of the masjid in Vienna's 12th Bezirk.

Irrespective of how Asim Cejvanovic's adventure outside the US embassy in Vienna last week will end, it is clear that the Austrian authorities are set to engage in a comprehensive settling of accounts with Muhamed Porca's Wahhabi movement. Just like 12 years ago, when they decided to close down the notorious TWRA organization, through which assistance for Bosnia-Hercegovina Muslims was arriving and for which there were indications that it was aiding terrorism. We will discuss all of this in more detail in the next 60 Minutes programme.

Source: Bosnia-Hercegovina Federation TV, Sarajevo, in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian 1800 gmt 8 Oct 07

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