Bosnian Network of White Al-Qaeda – Islamists and Wahhabis – with experience in fighting in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq, have shown great potential in organizing mobile “quick response in blood” groups. This is a fact that official Sarajevo can count on when it assesses that it is time to initiate political processes or create tensions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also in the region.
Salahudin (Miloš Žujović), the perpetrator of the terrorist act in Belgrade, did not go on a bloody rampage on his own initiative. The traces reveal coordination not only with the Wahhabi underground of Bosnia and Herzegovina but also with the American and British intelligence community, as well as local Sarajevo politicians. The attempted murder of a Serbian police officer was resolved in the least painful way, but the fact that Salahudin or radical fighters ready to participate in conflicts of varying intensity and at different locations – Albania, BiH (Muslim part), Kosovo, and Macedonia – number several tens of thousands at the moment, warns of scenarios with far-reaching consequences.
The presence of believers on a mission is not conspicuous, and even when noticed, their actions go unpunished. This is due to their patrons in parallel political systems and structures, which the members of the Muslim Brotherhood, through their branch in BiH named “Young Muslims,” systematically and aggressively built during the 20th century, especially since the 1990s – sometimes with approval, more often with direct assistance from Western power centers.
PENETRATION INTO SANDŽAK
The greatest success in the field of intelligence channels and operations, structures from Sarajevo achieved with the Islamic penetration into Serbia: first into Sandžak, then into Kosovo, and then Šumadija and Belgrade came into play. The operation was entrusted to the leaders of the Wahhabi stronghold Maoča Gornja, first Yusuf Barčić (eliminated in a staged car accident in 2007), Nusret Imamović (head of Al-Qaeda in Syria and commander of the terrorist formation “Saudi Network El Meali” in Idlib), and Nedžad Kučević (Nedžad Balkan – born in Serbia, a citizen of Austria and Bosnia and Herzegovina).
Nedžad Balkan, also known as Abu Muhammad, was born on September 21, 1975, in Tutin, Serbia, as the son of a construction entrepreneur, with Austrian citizenship. A former kickboxer, he left his studies in the Arab world due to disagreements with professors on fundamental matters of faith or, as he says, in “usul al-din and tawhid.” Because of his hard stance towards other Muslims, he and his jamaat (the smallest organizational unit of Muslim believers) were called the “takfir jamaat” by Austrian Muslims. His private, radical jamaat was located in the seventh district of Vienna, in the Sahab Mosque, and was built on conflict and separation first with the Islamic Community of BiH, and then with the then-authority Jordanian Sheikh Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, adopting a new direction from a certain Sheikh Abu Maryam, originally from Kuwait. He published his beliefs in the book “The Triumph of Prophetic Monotheism – Over the Call of Shirk (dawom širka) and Nationalism.”
In the well-known operation “Palmira” conducted by the Austrian Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, together with a group of Bosnian Wahhabis, he was arrested in 2017 and sentenced to several years in prison by the Graz court in 2019. But the seed had already been sown, even where it was least expected – in Serbia and among Serbs.
FROM TAXI DRIVER TO COMMANDER
The case of the Belgrade taxi driver Goran Pavlović, who entered the Wahhabi milieu, was a confirmation of how persistent work and a little money can turn a Serb into Abdullah, who faithfully served to qualify for Syria, where today, in Idlib, he commands a military unit of “Al Nusra” named “Bejt Balkan.” Abdullah’s contact was later found with Serbian citizen Igor Despotović, who was detained by Serbian security agencies in 2022 on suspicion of committing the crime of public incitement to commit terrorist acts. The dossier of the new follower of Nedžad Balkan includes planning a terrorist action, with a truck, in Knez Mihailova Street and brutally running over pedestrians. Five years earlier, Despotović was first arrested in Belgrade by the Counter-Terrorism Service operatives. In his apartment, detailed blueprints and plans identical to those executed in Nice on “Bastille Day” were found in his laptop and mobile phone. The terrorist act in Nice, carried out in 2016 (84 dead, 200 injured), served as an introduction to new attacks – in Berlin (Christmas 2016, 12 dead and 100 injured) and Barcelona in 2017 (13 dead and more than a hundred injured). The perpetrators of the actions Mohamed Bouhlel from Tunisia (in Nice), Anis Amri from Tunisia (in Berlin), and Younes Abouyaaqoub (from Morocco) pointed to the operation centers jointly conducted by the CIA and Mossad in Europe, located in the Maghreb countries.
Returning to the case of Despotović. During the search, detailed attack plans, correspondence with radical Islamists from Syria and Western Europe, four phones and SIM cards with numbers, two cameras with memory cards, and a laptop were found. Three papers with sketches titled “Evacuation,” “Map,” and “Traps” were also found… In Despotović’s phone, a plan titled “Tactics of Righteous Terror – Truck Attack” was found, detailing how to select a location and enter Knez Mihailova Street with a truck or van from Pariska Street near Kalemegdan.
THE TERRORIST WITH AN ENGENEERING DEGREE
Despotović is not the only Serb who entered the Wahhabi network. Boban Simeunović was arrested in Dortmund in 2016 for aiding terrorists and for the fact that Anis Amri, the truck killer from Berlin, stayed in his apartment for several days. Boban, a Bohemian engineer and a German citizen, was born in 1981 in the village of Šarbanovac near Bor.
Following the example of another German woman, Nadine Helwig, Boban converted to Islam, grew a beard, and began living by the rules that apply to Muslims. Boban last visited Bor in 2015. He had a long beard and was dressed like a Muslim, while his wife wore a burqa and was completely covered. German police suspect that Boban Simeunović, together with Tunisian Anis Amri, planned the attack in Berlin. According to investigators, Boban rented out an apartment to Amri, and they belonged to the same ISIS cell. The top of that terrorist group was arrested in November 2016 in Dortmund, when Boban ended up in prison. There is reasonable suspicion that the Berlin attack was an operation of intelligence services more powerful than the German ones.
Anis Amri was arrested three times in Germany in 2016. The terrorist was first detained in January 2016 when he tried to buy an automatic weapon from a man who turned out to be a police informant. After questioning, he was released but kept under surveillance. In July, he was detained again after he attacked a man with a knife while under the influence of drugs. He was released from detention then as well, only to be arrested again a month later for fighting and possessing a fake Italian passport. German services did not register him as a potential terrorist until November 2016. A month later, he disappeared from sight.
IS SANDŽAK TURKEY?
At the same time, the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime recognized the head of Belgrade’s Wahhabis, Goran Pavlović, leader of the Sandžak cell of “Islamic State,” Abid Podbićanin, and Rejhan Plojović. The court in Belgrade delivered a verdict in April 2018 in the absence of the accused, which was confirmed by the Court of Appeals the following year.
Abid Podbićanin (38) from Prijepolje, leader of the Wahhabi movement group, Teufik Mujović (36) from Tutin, and Sead Plojović (34) were sentenced to 11 years each, while Izdudin Crnovršanin (27) from Belgrade and Rejhan Plojović received nine and a half years each. Goran Pavlović Abdullah was sentenced to ten years, and Ferat Kasumović (34) to seven and a half years in prison. The verdict for Podbićanin, whose new name is Abu Sayfija, Pavlović, and Rejhan Plojović was delivered in absentia. Podbićanin’s fate is unknown, although there were unconfirmed reports that he died on the Syrian battlefield.
The accused received the verdict calmly. All except Mujović have a Wahhabi image, with shorter hair and beards. Mujović was writing something throughout the verdict reading, and at one point smiled at friends in the courtroom and gave them a hand signal that he was okay. Mujović allegedly had the combat name Abu Talha al-Yemeni, and he also used documents in the name Ali Selim al-Mazi. They were accused of glorifying the Islamic State via Facebook and calling for suicide actions in Sandžak, Belgrade, and Rome. One of the Facebook messages read: “Serbia will get the status of a republic in the Islamic state of the Balkans,” and another said: “Blood was shed for Sandžak, and this is for Allah, for His satisfaction. Sandžak is Turkey, and Turkey is Sandžak. Whoever doesn’t like it can drink water.”
Among the series of messages, one stands out: “Ten martyrdom operations and Sandžak is liberated…, and fifteen more and Belgrade is conquered… and finally Rome.”
OUTPOSTS IN SERBIA
The court established that Podbićanin and Mujović established a connection with the ISIS organization – Islamic State, at the beginning of 2013, and then collected money from like-minded people in Serbia and abroad to finance the departure of several citizens to terrorist training camps and the Syrian battlefield. The Association of Islamic Youth of Sandžak “Furkan” (Criterion) in Novi Pazar was designated as the place for recruiting jihadists and receiving those who were heading to the battlefield.
The public received this verdict calmly. It seems that the news about “incitement to violence” by Igor Despotović resonated more strongly than the 70 years of imprisonment for the terrorists. Also, Maksim Božić and Vinko Stojanović, now Abdullah, Mirza Gradaščević and Abdurahman, are just some of the Wahhabis who were once Serbs. In the capital, their number reaches 600 jihadists.
They are primarily stationed in Ledine and Zemun, where their mosque (without a minaret) was located on Vojni Put until it was removed, but they are also present in Palilula, the Medaković settlement, and the city center. They are mainly Sandžak people and refugees from Kosovo and Metohija, who are funded from Vienna. They are connected with mosques in Prizren, Bujanovac, and Gračanica, and their common goal is to recruit new members and provide logistical support to centers in Kosovo and BiH. The Belgrade mosque was subordinated to the Novi Pazar “Furkan,” which represents an outpost of the Wahhabi colony from Gornja Maoča.
FORMER MONK ABDULAH
The most famous and certainly the most important among them remains Goran Pavlović “Abdullah.” Before going to Syria to fight, Pavlović lived in Gornja Maoča, near Brčko. During the major security operation “Svetlost” in 2010, when about 700 policemen targeted Maoča and the Wahhabis, he was not arrested. His name reappeared in the media when illegal weapons were found in his father Tomislav’s house in Bosuta near Aranđelovac, and villagers reported that Wahhabis gathered there. He presented himself as a former monk, studied the Quran, and went on a pilgrimage to Mecca.
He introduced Islam to Maksim Božić (25), with whom he attended lectures by Nedžad Balkan “Abu Muhammad” in Vienna, listened to his cassettes, and shared his CDs and talks about the Wahhabi movement, socializing with the children of Muslim immigrants. Božić converted to Islam and became a Wahhabi at the age of 20. He is originally from Bijeljina and became known to the public in 2010 when he was arrested in Tuzla as a member of an extremist Islamic group on suspicion of preparing a terrorist attack.
During his arrest, the police found a certain amount of weapons and explosives that he and Wahhabi Enes Sejarić (28) were supposed to place on Brčanska Malta on the day of commemorating the “liberation” of Tuzla from the JNA.
LET THE POWDER KEG BURN
Božić presented himself as “Mirza Gradaščević.” After joining the Wahhabis, he also used the name Abu Muhammad. After returning from Vienna to Bosnia, after being expelled from Austria in 2008, Božić met Sejarić. That same year, two other Serbian citizens close to the Wahhabi movement were arrested in the area of BiH. These are Jasmin Korać and Milutin Sretenović, whom the police detained after searching the facility where they were staying in Tuzla, on suspicion that they planned to be accomplices in the attack on the day of commemorating the liberation of Tuzla.
The latest case of conversion to Islam in BiH was recorded in August 2013, when Vinko Stojanović (24) from Zavidovići in the Zenica-Doboj Canton changed his faith and took the name Abdurahman.
Official Sarajevo remains silent on all these facts. If the Prosecutor’s Office, under pressure from Western institutions, is forced to initiate some criminal proceedings, it is most often of a protocol nature and ends with an acquittal for the suspects. This should not be surprising. Bosnia is not a state – but a base of Islamist elements and a Jamaat in the heart of Europe, ready to activate its “sleepers” to destabilize the region when it receives an order from the so-called greatest fighter against terrorism – the Collective West.
