[Nettime-bold] More on Telling a Big One

["Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>]

I think the people in the Balkans are simply jealous that media 
attention went elsewhere (David Rohde, the journalist hero of 
Srebrenica, is in Northern Afghanistan, for example), so they want 
to bring all those cameras back. So, they keep finding bearded 
Arabs among themselves. Maybe Osama Bin Laden and Radovan 
Karadzic should, indeed, switch hiding locations to confuse 
international forces. Those were not able to dig Radovan out of his 
hide-out, despite having the military control over the region in which 
that hide-out is placed. Good luck with finding Osama.
ivo


------- Forwarded Message Follows -------

Bin Laden loyalists said heading to Bosnia

By Daria Sito-Sucic

  
SARAJEVO, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Dozens of militants linked to 
Saudi-born 
radical Osama bin Laden's organisation are trying to flee 
Afghanistan for 
Bosnia, the Interior Minister of the country's Muslim-Croat 
federation said 
on Friday. 

The ministry said it was ready to intercept those seeking refuge, presumably 
with local sympathisers, and had already taken measures with the United 
Nations policing mission and the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Bosnia. 

"We have got information from a reliable source that 70 people, who are 
involved in bin Laden's organisation, are preparing to leave Afghanistan for 
Bosnia, thinking it is now the safest place for them," minister Muhamed Besic 
said. 

Bin Laden has become the world's most wanted man after being named by the 
United States as the prime suspect for this month's suicide attacks on the 
World Trade Center in New York and The Pentagon near Washington. 

After the attacks local media revived allegations that Bosnian wartime 
authorities had issued a passport to bin Laden but this has been repeatedly 
denied. Some media have accused past Bosnian governments of backing foreign 
fighters with links to bin Laden. 

Some foreign Muslim volunteers, known as Mujahideen, were given passports in 
gratitude for fighting with Bosnia's Muslim-led army in their 1992-1995 
struggle against Serbs and at times also against Croats, but the government 
puts the number at only 420. 

The suffering of Bosnia's Muslims in the war and perceived Western sloth in 
coming to their aid became a rallying cry for hardline Islamic groups across 
the world. 

But the presence of hundreds of militant Arabs became an embarrassment for 
Bosnia's Muslim authorities after the war, with the United States 
conditioning aid on their departure, fearing that some were planning 
extremist actions. 

Besic said Bosnia's role as a transit centre for illegal immigration between 
East and West had enabled some criminals and terrorists to enter the country. 

"There are well-founded suspicions a number of criminals and terrorists used 
this way to enter Bosnia," he said. 

WAVE OF ARRESTS 

Bosnia's federation recently launched a crackdown on foreigners with Bosnian 
citizenship who were wanted abroad. It was intensified after the September 11 
suicide attacks. 

Besic said four Arabs were wanted by Interpol on terrorism charges. Two 
Egyptians were extradited to France, one Turk was handed to Germany on drugs 
charges and the remaining two Egyptians will be extradited to Egypt in 
following days. 

Besic said one of the Egyptians, also wanted by Croatia for allegedly taking 
part in a bomb attack, would not be extradited to Bosnia's neighbour due to 
Zagreb's failure to hand over a suspect in a car bomb attack on a Bosnian 
minister. 

Besic said that his ministry, acting upon information from Interpol and some 
foreign embassies in Sarajevo, had been tracking 13 people who were "under a 
well-founded suspicion of being linked to terrorism." 

He said local Bosnians and also foreigners with Bosnian citizenship were 
among the suspects.Bosnia's 1995 Dayton peace deal split the country into a 
Muslim-Croat federation and an autonomous Serb republic under a weak central 
government. 

11:02 09-28-01

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