Daily says Bosnian Mujahidin use video of killed US soldiers to recruit fighters
Supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring - January 18, 2009, Sunday

Text of report by Serbian newspaper Politika website on 16 January

[Report by Boro Maric: "Fighters for Iraq Jihad Recruited in Bosnia"]

Banja Luka - The shocking video footage of a sniper killing US soldiers in Baghdad that was run on B-H [Bosnia-Hercegovina] Federation TV's "60 Minutes" current affairs programme in Sarajevo was brought to B-H by mujahidin who had previously fought against the Americans and their allies in Iraq, it has been rightly suspected.

The film, which has been distributed and shown in apartments and houses in B-H for some time now, abounds with terrifying scenes of executions. It is a propaganda video, aimed at attracting Islamic radicals, mostly former fighters from "El-Mujahed Unit" in B-H and other countries, to volunteer for a jihad - "holy war" - against the Americans and their allies in Iraq.

Given that this is clearly an act of terrorism, our paper has asked the B-H State Investigation and Protection Agency whether it is investigating the video and the cases of recruitment of fighters for the Iraq war.

"The agency is taking measures and actions according to its authority, with an aim to identify individuals linked to the cases of recruiting people from B-H for the war in Iraq and to distributing of the video material showing liquidation of the US soldiers. The public will be informed of the investigation results in due time," B-H Investigation and Protection Agency spokeswoman Zeljka Kujundzija told us.

Zagreb Vecernji List announced that certain well-known individuals with proven links to the terrorist organizations have been mentioned in connection with the video distribution and building up of the network of snipers from Iraq and B-H. According to the Zagreb daily, these include Mesud Jasarevic, Esad Brkic, Enver Delic, and Enes Cane, who operates abroad.

The involvement of the B-H citizens - Bosniak Muslims - in the wars in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Iraq is not big news. In October 2001, Sarajevo Oslobodjenje published a confession by Hasan Dzamkic, who said that he had fought as a mujahidin against the troops of the then Soviet Union in Afghanistan in 1987-1988. In April 2000, the Sarajevo press wrote about the death of Jasin el Bosnevie from Sarajevo and Almir Tahirovic Nune from Novi Travnik. They were killed in Chechnya while waging a "holy war" against the Russian Federation. In the B-H war, Tahirovic fought in "El Mujahed" unit.

In November 2003, the chief of the German Intelligence Service [BND], August Hanning, said that "fighters for the Iraq war are being recruited in Europe." "We know that Islamic extremists from B-H, UK, and Germany have left to fight in Iraq. They reach Iraq via Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia," Hanning said, according to news agency reports.

At the end of 2004, French journalists Christian Chesnot and George Malbrunot, who were previously held hostage by the Islamic Army in Iraq for four months, also testified that the mujahidin who had fought in B-H were involved in the Iraq war.

"The kidnappers told us that they had fought in B-H. One of them, who was less than 30 years old, told me he had previously stayed at Bin Ladin's camp in Afghanistan and fought in B-H," Chesnot said. He said that one of the kidnappers used to play him an audiotape with Muslim songs from B-H.

Source: Politika website, Belgrade, in Serbian 16 Jan 09
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