Federation police say Salafi terrorist groups present in Bosnia
BBC Monitoring Europe (Political) - November 24, 2008 Monday

Text of report by Bosnian Serb privately-owned centrist newspaper Nezavisne novine, on 24 November

[Report by Albina Sorguc: "Wahhabis Did Not Like Bell"]

Sarajevo - Yesterday, the Sarajevo police arrested two Wahhabis, who tried to enter the Catholic Church of the Holy Trinity on Saturday [22 November] night, the Sarajevo Canton Interior Ministry has confirmed. Inspector Dragan Miokovic briefly said that the two people were arrested and that he would have more information later today.

The officials in the Sarajevo Canton Prosecutor's Office also said that they were waiting for the police's criminal report on the suspects after the police interrogation. We have learned from Ivan Ravlic, parish priest of the Catholic Church of the Holy Trinity, that two men with beards and shortened trousers rang the bell at the church door on Saturday at 1915 [1815 gmt]; they told him that they did not like the church bell. "I asked why they were coming at that hour, and they said that they wanted to talk with the priest. When I said that I was the parish priest, they asked from me to open the door, so that they could see the inside of the church. I told them that there was no need for them to look at the church at that hour and that we did not open the church at that hour. They, then, said that they did not like the bell. I told them to come the next day to talk," parish priest Ravlic said.

He said that, before the two men rang the bell, he observed them on the video-surveillance recording on this church, which is situated in the Dolac Malta part of Sarajevo.

"They both had a beard; one had a longer beard, and the other one shorter. They wore shorter trousers, and one of them wore an army fleece. All this can be seen on the recording that I submitted to the police," Ravlic said. He thinks that this event is a serious thing, because the Wahhabis have not come to the parishioner's offices before.

"The police were also on duty by the church all night, and I heard that they sent the patrols to stay outside all the churches in Sarajevo," Ravlic said. He thinks that their coming to the church was connected with the fact that the church has been recently renovated.

[Box] Serb Republic, B-H Federation Police Have Data on Salafis

Banja Luka - The Serb Republic and the B-H Federation police possess information about a group of the Salafi terrorists in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Serb Republic Police Director Uros Pena has confirmed. "These groups have been under surveillance from before. The cooperation with the Federation police is constant on this question," Pena noted. He said that the Serb Republic police were in constant contact with the Federation Police Administration, because, he said, the B-H territory was almost a unified area when it came to security.

Zlatko Miletic, the director of the Federation Police Administration, has said earlier that there was a group of terrorists in Bosnia-Hercegovina and that its goal was to carry out a terrorist act with the political background, but that they were not the Wahhabis, but the Salafis. "The Wahhabis have become the synonym for this kind of terrorism, but this time it is about the Salafis. We have four groups of such people, two of which are very interesting for us, from the point of view of their thinking and perception and their ideas about how to solve the problems in Bosnia-Hercegovina and the world," Miletic stressed.

The Salafi people preach the Islamic monotheism, that is, the tevhid, and they take over certain teachings from Ibn Taymiyyah, the Syrian scholar from the 14th century. They think that their task is to take Islam back to the state from the time of Prophet Mohammed.

Source: Nezavisne novine, Banja Luka, in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian 24 Nov 08
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