Serbia and Bosnia raid radicals after attack

GORNJA MAOCA, Bosnia-Herzegovina / BELGRADE

Mevlid Jasarevic (23), stands at an intersection holding an AK-47. AFP photo

Police in Serbia and Bosnia carried out raids on suspected radical Islamists Oct. 29 after a gunman opened fire with an assault rifle on the U.S. embassy in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo.

Serbian police arrested and later released 17 people in three points in the southwest of the country, including the mainly Muslim Novi Pazar, the hometown of the gunman identified as 23-year-old Mevludin Jasarevic.

Oct. 28’s attack in broad daylight paralyzed central Sarajevo and saw shopkeepers scrambling for cover as the gunman paced up and down firing on the embassy before a police sharpshooter wounded him and he was arrested. One police officer was also wounded and several bullets struck the wall of the embassy compound in an attack that threw a fresh spotlight on the threat from radical Islam in the Balkans.

'Extremist Islamists'

Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said the raids had targeted the “extremist Islamic Wahhabi movement” in the southwest of Serbia, a mainly Orthodox Christian country. Wahhabism is a strict branch of Islam. Police seized computers, compact discs, military uniforms, knives, baseball bats and a sword, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Bosnia’s security minister, Sadik Ahmetovic, said Bosnian authorities coordinated activities with their Serbian counterparts. “Several locations have been raided and a number of individuals believed to have had links with the perpetrator have been interrogated in Bosnia,” Ahmetovic told reporters. The state prosecutor Dubravko Campara said he had met the gunman but could not provide more detail on his motives in the interest of ongoing investigation. Serbian media reported police had stepped up security around the U.S. embassy in the capital Belgrade. U.S. Ambassador to Bosnia Patrick Moon said Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents were expected to conduct an investigation into the damage on the embassy building. In 2007, police uncovered what they said was an Islamist “terrorist” training camp, seizing plastic explosives, grenades and automatic weapons.

In 2010, Bosnian police also raided the northern village of Gornja Maoca which is home to followers of the Islamic Wahhabi branch. Bosnian intelligence officials have said last year that at least 3,000 Wahhabis live in Bosnia. Bakir Izetbegovic, one of Bosnia’s three presidents, issued a statement Oct. 28 condemning “the terrorist attack on the embassy of the U.S.” U.S. Ambassador to Bosnia Patrick Moon told reporters “this is a regrettable incident,” and that his country has full confidence in Bosnian police and judicial authorities.

Compiled from Reuters and AP stories by the Daily News staff.