London Bombings: More Balkans Blow-back?
The New American - August 1, 2005

by William Norman Grigg

Who is "al-Qaeda of Europe," the previously unknown terrorist group claiming responsibility for the murderous London bombings? Three of the suspected suicide bombers (all killed in the explosions) were immigrants from Pakistan: Mohammed Sidique Khan, 30; Hasib Hussain, 19; and Shehzad Tanweer, 22. Not immediately found was a fourth suspect, designated in some accounts as the presumed "master bomber."

A story in the London-based Financial Times quoted a top British explosives expert who claimed that the nature of the London explosions “suggests that the perpetrators acquired either military or high-quality commercial explosives, possibly from Eastern Europe.” According to Christophe Chaboud, head of the French security service’s Anti-terrorist Co-ordination Unit, “The use of military explosives is very worrying.... How did they procure them? Either they were supplied by the underground market, for example from the Balkans, or they benefited from accomplices who removed explosives from a military base.”

It’s worth recalling that, thanks to U.S. intervention, the Balkans have become a haven for radical Islamist terrorist organizations. This is particularly true of the former Yugoslav provinces of Bosnia and Kosovo.

During the three-sided Bosnian civil war, which pitted Serbs, Croats, and Bosnian Muslims against each other, the Clinton administration actively supported Bosnian Jihadists aligned with both Iran and Osama bin Laden. During the 1999 bombing of Serbia, Washington provided intelligence and material support to the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a Marxist narco-terrorist group closely allied to bin Laden. Incredibly, this took place after al-Qaeda’s 1998 attacks against our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania — and despite the fact that the KLA had been officially designated as a terrorist group by the State Department.

Also worth remembering is the fact that Sanel Sjekirika, accused by Spanish authorities of being the “mastermind” of the murderous March 2004 rail station bombing in Madrid, was from Bosnia.

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