WAR 1971

[Kshatriya87]

whst about 1971 war ?

-----------------------

What about it?
.............................................

 

[Bornubus]

What about it?
.............................................

Indira


____________________________

 

[Kshatriya87]

Indira


____________________________

Oh.. yes.
.............................................................................

 

[Screambowl]

any news of the terrorist caught alive, has he informed about, who is behind all this mindless loss of life ?

We are getting info in bits and in pieces. Lets wait and watch.

The Bangladesh authorities are pointing towards ISI.

However, the home minister of Bangladesh, Asaduzzaman Khan, has stated that the perpetrators belonged to Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen and were not affiliated with ISIL. They were well-educated and mostly from rich families.[44][45] Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's political adviser Hossain Toufique Imam said that Pakistani intelligence agencyInter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is suspected to have links with the attack

wiki

 

[mattster]

Pakistan - the only freaking thing this worthless shit-hole of a country can export is TERROR.

This is the most criminal country in existence !!
All they do is create havoc and sponsor terror.

 

[thethinker]

The misconception that Paki civilian govt is actually peaceful and it's only the Paki military that supports terrorists is busted. Both - the meek civilian govt and the psycho Paki military complement the end goal of state sponsored terrorism.

More like a good cop (Paki govt) and bad cop (Pak military) routine.

Pakistan’s ‘University of Jihad’ Just Received $3 Million in Government Funding

http://time.com/4379393/pakistan-seminary-darul-uloom-haqqania-terrorism-taliban-jihad-funding/

The Darul Uloom Haqqania seminary is a known breeding ground for extremists
Even as Pakistan grapples with hard-line Islamic militancy, with regular attacks across the country claiming dozens of lives, the provision of a $3 million grant by one of its provincial governments to a seminary dubbed the “University of Jihad” has unsettled many and prompted sharp criticism.

Leaders from the volatile Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province announced the grant to the Darul Uloom Haqqania seminary in a provincial-assembly meeting last week, the Washington Post reports. According to government officials, the institution currently houses around 4,000 students.

“A large number of students study, live and eat in this seminary, and it’s doing great service for the poor people,” the province’s Information Minister Mushtaq Ghani told the Post.

However, the highly controversial seminary is known as a breeding ground for Islamic militants, advocating an extreme form of Islam known as Deobandi that supports Shari’a law. Mohammad Omar, the founder of the Taliban, and Asim Umar, the head of extremist group al-Qaeda’s South Asian affiliate, are both believed to have studied there, as is the head of the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani network.

“The Taliban are killing our children, and our government is giving money to their sympathizers,” said Pakistani Senator Shahi Syed.

However, the country’s central government leaders, including aides of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, insist that the disbursement of funds is a purely local decision.

 

[alphacentury]

Its now speculated that the brave heart Faraz, who was supposedly killed by terrorists , might actually be one of them. His grandfather is a powerful person and owner of 'The Daily Star', leading english newspaper of BD. The heroic angle to his story was pushed by the daily star along other news papers.This was published by NYT. Note, it takes into account the person who wasn't there.

Also:


Details: http://www.ourtimebd.com/beta/2016/07/04/faraaz-victim-or-terrorist/

 

[Bengal_Tiger]

Rockey71 using his "asad71" handle in notorious anti-Bangladeshi hate site, ********** has expressed support for terrorism.

http://**********/threads/danger-of-final-blow-to-bds-sovereignity-is-approaching.437462/

This guy should be banned as he is a pro-Pakistan terrorist supporter supporting terrorism against my country, and also terrorists who murder Hindu priests and also killed an Indian in the Dhaka cafe massacre.

 

[Neo]

Dhaka attackers followed controversial Indian Islamic preacher Zakir Nayek


DHAKA: Two of the five Bangladeshi militants who hacked to death 20 people at a restaurant in Dhaka's diplomatic zone used to follow three controversial Islamists, including Indian Islamic preacher Zakir Nayek.

Militant Rohan Imtiaz, son of an Awami League leader, propagated on Facebook last year quoting Peace TV's controversial preacher Nayek "urging all Muslims to be terrorists", the Daily Star reported.

Read more at:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com...ofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

 

[Neo]

Bangladesh refutes Indian media reports claiming Pakistan's links to Dhaka attack
By News Desk / Kamran Yousaf
Published: July 4, 2016
1,314SHARES

Members of the Rapid Action Battalion are seen outside the Holey Artisan restaurant, where gunmen had taken hostages, in the upscale Gulshan area of Dhaka, Bangladesh, July 2, 2016.

ISLAMABAD: Bangladesh on Sunday refuted Indian media reports claiming it blamed Pakistan for the recent Dhaka cafe siege which killed at least 20 people.

Terming reports by Indian media as ‘fake’, Adviser to the Bangladesh Prime Minister on International Affairs Professor Gowher Rizvi assured Islamabad Dhaka did not blame Pakistan for the attack.

A letter to Islamabad on behalf of Rizvi in fact urged all countries, including Pakistan, to help Bangladesh in its fight against terror.

The Bangladesh High Commission in Islamabad issued a statement which quoted Rizvi as saying, “The statement issued by Indian media was ‘utter nonsense’ and that he has never issued any statement or spoken to any TV channel regarding the issue.”

“Professor Gowher Rizvi wanted me to convey this immediately to Islamabad so that there was no misunderstanding,” the letter read.

On Sunday, NDTV claimed the deadly terror attack was likely enabled by Pakistan’s premier spy agency ISI.

“Hossain Toufique Imam is the political adviser to Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister of Bangladesh. HT Imam told NDTVthat the manner in which the hostages, which included a 19-year-old Indian student Tarishi Jain, were killed with machetes suggests the role of a local terrorist group, the banned Jamaatul Mujahideen,” the report said.

Last week, armed militants had killed 20 civilians after taking them hostage in a Bangladesh cafe overnight and many of the victims were hacked to death, an army spokesperson said.

“We’ve recovered 20 bodies. Most them had been brutally hacked to death with sharp weapons,” Brigadier General Nayeem Ashfaq Chowdhury told reporters in Dhaka, without giving the nationality of the victims.

Thirteen survivors were also rescued at the end of the siege in an upmarket neighbourhood of the capital Dhaka, including three foreigners.

“Three of those who were rescued were foreigners, including one Japanese and two Sri Lankans,” said the spokesperson.

Pakistan terms allegations ‘baseless, irresponsible and provocative’

Meanwhile, Pakistan rejected on Monday allegations of involvement in the Dhaka terror episode as “baseless, irresponsible and provocative”.

In response to media queries regarding allegations of Pakistan’s involvement in the attack, FO spokesperson Nafees Zakaria stressed that “these are highly regrettable, irresponsible and provocative stories being carried in the Indian media. They are utterly baseless and unfounded. Pakistan strongly rejects such allegations.”

The spokesperson referred the media to the statement of adviser to Bangladeshi PM, refuting the Indian media story.

“Pakistan deeply appreciates Prof Gowher’s timely rebuttal to the Indian media’s reports. Pakistan has strongly condemned the terrorist attack in Dhaka and expressed solidarity with the government and the brotherly people of Bangladesh and offered condolences and sympathised with the families of the victims,” Zakaria said.

“Pakistan condemns terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. Being itself one of the biggest victims of terrorism, Pakistan welcomes Prof Gowher Rizvi’s call for international cooperation to fight the menace of terrorism,” he added.

http://tribune.com.pk/story/1135860...eports-claiming-pakistans-links-dhaka-attack/

 

[Bengal_Tiger]

^
Misleading title.

Gowher Rizvi, a former US academic turned "policy advisor" to Hasina, merely said that he himself personally did not accuse Pakistan.

However 2 other officials including a minister have suggested possible Pakistani involvement in this incident.

Beyond this incident Pakistan is known to sponsor terrorism in Bangladesh.

It also interferes in internal Bangladeshi affairs, supports war criminals, harasses Bangladeshi diplomats and generally carries out provocative and hostile behaviour towards Bangladesh.

 

[Neo]

^
Misleading title.

Gowher Rizvi, a former US academic turned "policy advisor" to Hasina, merely said that he himself personally did not accuse Pakistan.

However 2 other officials including a minister have suggested possible Pakistani involvement in this incident.

Beyond this incident Pakistan is known to sponsor terrorism in Bangladesh.

It also interferes in internal Bangladeshi affairs, supports war criminals, harasses Bangladeshi diplomats and generally carries out provocative and hostile behaviour towards Bangladesh.

Let the other two make fake allegations, your high commission in Islamabad will have to come with two new embarrassing statements.

 

[Bengal_Tiger]

1. Pakistan has been burning with anger since it's humiliating defeat in 1971.

Now it's fury has been rekindled with the execution of war criminals which Pakistan has been powerless to protect besides resolutions in parliament, and screaming and yelling generally.

2. A lot of the Pakistani terror network in Bangladesh was dismantled in 2009.

You were kicked out as a state in 1971 and will need your proxies and assets to be eliminated.

Even the Afghans humiliated you in Torkham recently and the Afghans will be increasing their military power - to deal with your terrorist state - in the next few years, so make sure you don't lose western Pakistan (Pakhtunkhwa) like you lost in "east Pakistan" in 1971.

 

[OrangeFlorian]

ALL Muslim countries have been infiltrated by Saudi based money and their Wahhabi ideology.

The Saudis are the world's biggest terrorists - they use their money to spread their sick fascist religion to the Muslim world. I predict that these types of attacks against non-Muslims will start happening in all Muslim countries.

The US and the rest of the world should start making the Saudis shut down their missionary work.
Islamist is at war with the non-Muslim world.......the non-Muslim world needs to wake up !!

*cough* *cough* kosovo *cough* *cough* bosnia

 

[OrangeFlorian]

Bosnian mujahideen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

El Mudžahid

Active 1992–95
Country

Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Allegiance

Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Branch Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Type Infantry
Size 300-6000 fighters
Colors Black, white, green
Mascot Scimitar
Equipment AK-47, PKM, various surplus Eastern Bloc and civilian weapons such as hunting rifles and shotguns
Engagements
Bosnian War

• Croat-Bosniak War
• Battle for Vozuća
• Operation Miracle
• Battle of Sarajevo
• Battle of Mostar

Disbanded 1995
Commanders
Notable
commanders Sakib Mahmuljin
Amir Kubura

Abu Abdel Aziz Barbarossa

Abu Mali

Adil al-Ghanim †
Bosnian mujahideen (Bosnian: Bosanski mudžahedini), also called El Mudžahid, were foreign Muslim volunteers who fought on the Bosniak side during the 1992–95 Bosnian War. They arrived in Bosnia and Herzegovina with the aim of fighting for Islam and on behalf of Muslims.[1]

Some originally went as humanitarian workers,[2] while some of them were considered criminals in their home countries for illegally travelling to Bosnia and becoming soldiers. The number of volunteers throughout the war is still disputed,[3] with estimates varying from around 300[4][5] to 4,000.[6]

Known mujahideen in Bosnia include Abdelkader Mokhtari, Fateh Kamel, and Karim Said Atmani, all of North African origin.[7]



Contents
[hide]

• 1Bosnian War
  • 1.1Sunni involvement
  • 1.2Shia involvement
  • 1.3Relationship to the Bosnian government army
  • 1.4Propaganda
• 2After the war
  • 2.1Citizenship controversy
  • 2.2War crimes trials
  • 2.3Terrorist links
• 3See also
• 4References and notes
• 5Further reading
• 6External links

Bosnian War[edit]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.(July 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
Main article: Bosnian War
Secret discussions between Franjo Tuđman and Slobodan Milošević reportedly about the partition of Bosnia and Herzegovinabetween Serbia and Croatia were held as early as March 1991 at the Karađorđevo meeting. Following the declaration of independence of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbs attacked different parts of the country. The state administration of Bosnia and Herzegovina effectively ceased to function, having lost control over the entire territory. The Serbs wanted all lands where Serbs had a majority, mainly eastern and western Bosnia. The Croats and their leader Tuđman also aimed at securing parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina as Croatian. The Bosnian government forces were poorly equipped and unprepared for the war.[8]

On September 25, 1991 the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 713 imposing an arms embargo on all of former Yugoslavia. The embargo hurt the Bosnian Army the most because Serbia inherited much of the former Yugoslav People's Army arsenal and the Croatian army could smuggle weapons easily through its ports.[citation needed]

At the outset of the Bosnian War the Serb forces attacked the Bosnian Muslim civilian population in Eastern Bosnia. Once towns and villages were securely in their hands, the Serb forces - military, police, the paramilitaries and, sometimes, even Serb villagers – applied the same pattern: Bosniak houses and apartments were systematically ransacked or burnt down, Bosniak civilians were rounded up or captured, and sometimes beaten or killed in the process. Men and women were separated, with many of the men detained in the camps, where many were tortured and killed. The women were kept in various detention centres where they were mistreated in many ways including being raped repeatedly.[9]

Meanwhile, Croat forces started their first attacks on Bosniaks in Gornji Vakuf and Novi Travnik, towns in Central Bosnia on June 20, 1992, but the attacks failed. The Graz agreement caused deep division inside the Croat community and strengthened the separation group, which led to the Lašva Valley ethnic cleansing campaign against Bosniak civilians. The campaign planned by the self-proclaimed Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia's political and military leadership from May 1992 to March 1993 which was launched the following April, was meant to implement objectives set forth by Croat nationalists in November 1991.[10] The Lašva Valley's Bosniaks were subjected to persecution on political, racial and religious grounds,[11] deliberately discriminated against in the context of a widespread attack on the region's civilian population[12] and suffered mass murder, rape, internment in camps, as well as the destruction of cultural sites and private property. This was often followed by anti-Bosniak propaganda, particularly in the municipalities of Vitez, Busovača, Novi Travnik and Kiseljak.

Sunni involvement[edit]
Foreign mujahideen arrived in central Bosnia in the second half of 1992[1] with the aim of helping their Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) coreligionists to defend themselves from the Serb and Croat forces. Mostly they came from North Africa, the Near East and the Middle East. On 13 August 1993, the Bosnian government officially organized foreign volunteers into the detachment known as El Mudžahid in order to impose control and order.[1] Initially, the foreign mujahideen gave food and other basic necessities to the local Muslim population, who were deprived of such by the Serb forces. Once hostilities broke out between the Bosnian government and the Croat forces (HVO), the mujahideen also participated in battles against the HVO alongside ARBiH units.[1]

The foreign mujahideen recruited local young men, offering them military training, uniforms and weapons. As a result, some Bosniaks joined the foreign mujahideen and in the process became local mujahideen.[1] They imitated the foreigners in both dress and behaviour, to such an extent that it was sometimes, according to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) documentation in subsequent war crimes trials, "difficult to distinguish between the two groups". For that reason, the ICTY has used the term "Mujahideen" (which they spell Mujahedin) for both fighters from Arab countries, and also local Muslims who joined the mujahideen units.[13]

They quickly attracted heavy criticism from people who claimed their presence was evidence of violent Islamic fundamentalism in Europe. The foreign volunteers even became unpopular with many of the Bosniak population, because the Bosnian army had thousands of troops and had no need for more soldiers, but rather for arms. Many Bosnian Army officers and intellectuals were suspicious of the foreign volunteers arrival in the central part of the country, because they came from Split and Zagreb in Croatia, and were passed through the self-proclaimed Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia without problems, unlike Bosnian Army soldiers who were regularly arrested by Croat forces.[citation needed]

The first mujahideen training camp was located in Poljanice next to the village of Mehurici, in the Bila valley, Travnik municipality. The mujahideen group established there included mujahideen from Arab countries as well as some Bosniaks. The mujahideen from Poljanice camp were also established in the towns of Zenica and Travnik and, from the second half of 1993 onwards, in the village of Orasac[disambiguation needed], also located in the Bila valley.[1][14]

The military effectiveness of the mujahideen is disputed. However, former U.S. Balkans peace negotiator Richard Holbrooke said in an interview that he thought "the Muslims wouldn't have survived without this" help, as at the time a U.N. arms embargo diminished the Bosnian government's fighting capabilities. In 2001, Holbrooke called the arrival of the mujahideen "a pact with the devil" from which Bosnia still is recovering.[6] On the other hand, according to general Stjepan Šiber, the highest ranking ethnic Croat in Bosnian Army, the key role in foreign volunteers arrival was played by Tuđman and Croatian counter-intelligence with the aim to justify the involvement of Croatia in the Bosnian War and the crimes committed by Croat forces. Although the Bosnian President Alija Izetbegović regarded them as symbolically valuable as a sign of the Muslim world's support for Bosnia, they appear to have made little military difference and became a major political liability.[5]

Shia involvement[edit]
Predominantly Shia Iran was one of the first Muslim countries to provide support for Bosniaks (who are mainly Sunni Muslim). Iran supplied two-thirds of the total weapons and ammunition received by the Bosnian Muslim forces during the 1992-95 war. From May, 1994 to January, 1996, Iran transported over 5,000 tons of weapons and military equipment to Bosnia.[15] Iran not only sent supplies but also fighters. Lebanese Shia Hezbollah also had fighters in the Bosnian war[citation needed]. Robert Baer, a CIA agent stationed in Sarajevo during the war, later claimed that “In Sarajevo, the Bosnian Muslim government is a client of the Iranians . . . If it’s a choice between the CIA and the Iranians, they’ll take the Iranians any day.” By war’s end, public opinion polls showed some eighty-six percent of the Bosnian Muslim population expressed a positive attitude toward Iran.[16] All Shia foreign advisors and fighters withdrew from Bosnia at the end of conflict.

According to some US NGO reports, there were also several hundred Iranian Revolutionary Guards assisting the Bosnian government during the war. Muslim fighters also joined the ranks of the Bosnian Muslims, most notably being fighters from the Lebanese guerrilla organization Hezbollah. These were however reserved for duties requiring close combat engagements, simply because their skill and experience was too valuable to be wasted in other less complicated duties.[17]

Relationship to the Bosnian government army[edit]
ICTY found that there was one battalion-sized unit called El Mudžahid (El Mujahid). It was established on 13 August 1993, by the Bosnian Army, which decided to form a unit of foreign fighters in order to impose control over them as the number of the foreign volunteers started to increase.[18] The El Mudžahid unit was initially attached to and supplied by the regular Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH), even though they often operated independently as a special unit.[19]

According to the ICTY indictment of Rasim Delić, Commander of Main Staff of the Bosnian army (ARBiH), after the formation of the 7th Muslim Brigade on 19 November 1992, the El Mudžahid were subordinated within its structure. According to a UN communiqué of 1995, the El Mudžahid battalion was "directly dependent on Bosnian staff for supplies" and for "directions" during combat with the Serb forces.[20] The issue has formed part of two ICTY war crimes trials against two former senior officials in the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina on the basis of superior criminal responsibility. In its Trial Chamber judgement in the case of ICTY v. Enver Hadžihasanović, commander of the ARBiH 3rd Corps(who was later made part of the joint command of the ARBiH and was the Chief of the Supreme Command Staff), and Amir Kubura, commander of the 7th Muslim Brigade of the 3rd Corps of the ARBiH, the Trial Chamber found that

"the foreign Mujahedin established at Poljanice camp were not officially part of the 3rd Corps or the 7th Brigade of the ARBiH. Accordingly, the Prosecution failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the foreign Mujahedin officially joined the ARBiH and that they were de iure subordinated to the Accused Enver Hadžihasanović and Amir Kubura.[1]

It also found that

"there are significant indicia of a subordinate relationship between the Mujahedin and the Accused prior to August 13, 1993. Testimony heard by the Trial Chamber and, in the main, documents tendered into evidence demonstrate that the ARBiH maintained a close relationship with the foreign Mujahedin as soon as these arrived in central Bosnia in 1992. Joint combat operations are one illustration of that. In Karaula and Visoko in 1992, at Mount Zmajevac around mid-April 1993 and in the Bila valley in June 1993, the Mujahedin fought alongside ARBiH units against Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat forces."[1]

However, the ICTY Appeals Chamber in April 2008 concluded that the relationship between the 3rd Corps of the Bosnian Army headed by Hadžihasanović and the El Mudžahid detachment was not one of subordination but was instead close to overt hostility since the only way to control the detachment was to attack them as if they were a distinct enemy force.[18]

Propaganda[edit]
Although Serb and Croat media created much controversy about alleged war crimes committed by the squad, no indictment was issued by International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia against any of these foreign volunteers. The only foreign person convicted of war crimes was Swedish neo-Nazi Jackie Arklov, who fought in the Croatian army (first convicted by a Bosnian court, later by a Swedish court). According to the ICTY verdicts, Serb propaganda was very active, constantly propagating false information about the foreign fighters in order to inflame anti-Muslim hatred among Serbs. After the takeover of Prijedor by Serb forces in 1992, Radio Prijedor propagated Serb nationalistic ideas characterising prominent non-Serbs as criminals and extremists who should be punished. One example of such propaganda was the derogatory language used for referring to non-Serbs such as "Mujahedin", "Ustaše" or "Green Berets", although at the time there were no foreign volunteers in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The ICTY concluded in the Milomir Stakić verdict that, Mile Mutić, the director of the local paper Kozarski Vjesnik and the journalist Rade Mutić regularly attended meetings of Serb politicians (local authorities) in order to be informed about the next steps for spreading propaganda.[21][22]

Another example of propaganda about "Islamic holy warriors" is presented in the ICTY Kordić and Čerkez verdict for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed byCroatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia leadership on Bosniak civilians. Gornji Vakuf was attacked by Croatian Defence Council (HVO) in January 1993 followed by heavy shelling of the town by Croat artillery. During cease-fire negotiations at the Britbat HQ in Gornji Vakuf, Colonel Andrić, representing the HVO, demanded that the Bosnian forces lay down their arms and accept HVO control of the town, threatening that if they did not agree he would flatten Gornji Vakuf to the ground.[23][24] The HVO demands were not accepted by the Bosnian Army and the attack continued, followed by massacres on Bosnian Muslim civilians in the neighbouring villages of Bistrica, Uzričje, Duša, Ždrimci and Hrasnica.[25][26]The shelling campaign and the attacks during the war resulted in hundreds of injured and killed, mostly Bosnian Muslim civilians. Although Croats often cited it as a major reason for the attack on Gornji Vakuf in order to justify attacks and massacres on civilians, the commander of the UN Britbat company claimed that there were no Muslim "holy warriors" in Gornji Vakuf and that his soldiers did not see any.[23]

According to Predrag Matvejević, a notable Italian and Croatian modern prosaist who analyzed the situation, the number of Arab volunteers who came to help the Bosnian Muslims, "was much smaller than the number presented by Serb and Croat propaganda".[5]

After the war[edit]
Citizenship controversy[edit]
The foreign mujahideen were required to leave the Balkans under the terms of the 1995 Dayton Agreement, but many stayed. Although the U.S. State Department report suggested that the number could be higher, an unnamed SFOR official said allied military intelligence estimated that no more than 200 foreign-born militants actually lived in Bosnia in 2001, of whom around 30 represent a hard-core group with direct or indirect links to terrorism.[6][27]

In September 2007, 50 of these individuals had their citizenship status revoked. Since then 100 more individuals have been prevented from claiming citizenship rights. 250 more were under investigation, while the body which is charged to reconsider the citizenship status of the foreign volunteers in the Bosnian War, including Christian fighters from Russiaand Western Europe, states that 1,500 cases will eventually be examined.

War crimes trials[edit]
Main articles: Enver Hadžihasanović, Amir Kubura, and Rasim Delić
It is alleged that mujahideen participated in a few incidents considered to be war crimes according to the international law. However no indictment was issued by the ICTY against them, but a few Bosnian Army officers were indicted on the basis of command responsibility.

Both Amir Kubura and Enver Hadžihasanović (the indicted Bosnian Army officers) were found not guilty on all counts related to the incidents involving mujahideen.[18] The judgments in the cases of Hadžihasanović and Kabura concerned a number of events involving mujahideen. On June 8, 1993, Bosnian Army attacked Croat forces in the area of Maline village as a reaction to the massacres committed by Croats in nearby villages of Velika Bukovica and Bandol on June 4. After the village of Maline was taken, a military police unit of the 306th Brigade of Bosnian Army arrived in Maline. These policemen were to evacuate and protect the civilians in the villages taken by the Bosnian Army. The wounded were left on-site and around 200 people, including civilians and Croat soldiers, were taken by the police officers towards Mehurici. The commander of the 306th Brigade authorised the wounded be put onto a truck and transported to Mehurici. Suddenly, a number of mujahideen stormed the village of Maline. Even though the commander of the Bosnian Army 306th Brigade forbade them to approach, they did not submit. The 200 villagers who were being escorted to Mehurici by the 306th Brigade military police were intercepted by the mujahideen in Poljanice. They took 20 military-aged Croats and a young woman wearing a Red Cross armband. The prisoners were taken to Bikoci, between Maline and Mehurici. 23 Croatian soldiers and the woman were executed in Bikoci while they were being held prisoner.[28]

The ICTY indictment of Rasim Delić, also treats incidents related to mujahideen during the summer of 1995, such as the murder of two Serb soldiers on 21 July 1995 as part ofOperation Miracle, the murder of a Serb POW at the Kamenica prison camp on 24 July 1995, and events related to 60 Serb soldiers captured during the Vozuća battle that are missing and presumed to have been killed by foreign volunteers.[29]

Terrorist links[edit]
See also: Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar
Following the end of the Bosnian War and, especially, after the 11 September attacks (committed by a group of 19 al-Qaeda agents that included two Saudi Bosnian War veterans), the links between the mujahideen, al-Qaeda and the radicalization of some European Muslims has become more widely discussed.

In an interview with U.S. journalist Jim Lehrer, Holbrooke stated:

There were over 1,000 people in the country who belonged to what we then called Mujahideen freedom fighters. We now know that that was al-Qaida. I'd never heard the word before, but we knew who they were. And if you look at the 9/11 hijackers, several of those hijackers were trained or fought in Bosnia. We cleaned them out, and they had to move much further east into Afghanistan. So if it hadn't been for Dayton, we would have been fighting the terrorists deep in the ravines and caves of Central Bosnia in the heart of Europe.[30]

Evan Kohlmann wrote:

Some of the most important factors behind the contemporary radicalization of European Muslim youth can be found in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the cream of the Arab mujahideen from Afghanistan tested their battle skills in the post-Soviet era and mobilized a new generation of pan-Islamic revolutionaries.

He also notes that Serbian and Croatian sources about the subject are "pure propaganda" based on their historical hatred for Bosniaks "as Muslim aliens in the heart of Christian lands".[31]

Some authors suggested that the United States fully supported Muslim militants including current and former top al-Qaeda members.[32]

According to the Radio Free Europe research "Al-Qaeda In Bosnia-Herzegovina: Myth Or Present Danger", Bosnia is no more related to the potential terrorism than any other European country.[31]

Juan Carlos Antúnez in his comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon of "Wahhabism" in Bosnia, written in 2007 has noted that:

Different articles appearing in local and international mass media have commented about the role of Bosnia-Herzegovina in different issues related with international terrorist networks. Most of this information is unconfirmed. The substance of follow-on media coverage is variously both true and false. Terrorist cells are no less likely to be present in Bosnia-Herzegovina than in any other state. Bosnian Serb and Serbian media outlets regularly misappropriate such reporting, and the information is generalized to the point of suggest that Bosnia-Herzegovina is a significant threat to ethno-national security because it allegedly harbours foreign Islamic terrorists. This is nationalist propaganda that deliberately obscures the facts in two areas: first, the symptoms of global security threats are confused with the causes of Bosnian state weakness; and second, deliberate state-level support to terrorism rather than the weak state’s inability to police itself. The terrorist phenomenon in B-H is no more developed, and the risk of a terrorist attack is not higher than in other parts of the world.[33]

 

[OrangeFlorian]

How Kosovo Was Turned
Into Fertile Ground for ISIS

Extremist clerics and secretive associations funded by Saudis and others
have transformed a once-tolerant Muslim society into a font of extremism.

By CARLOTTA GALLMAY 21, 2016

PRISTINA, Kosovo — Every Friday, just yards from a statue of Bill Clinton with arm aloft in a cheery wave, hundreds of young bearded men make a show of kneeling to pray on the sidewalk outside an improvised mosque in a former furniture store.

The mosque is one of scores built here with Saudi government money and blamed for spreading Wahhabism — the conservative ideology dominant in Saudi Arabia — in the 17 years since an American-led intervention wrested tiny Kosovo from Serbian oppression.

Since then — much of that time under the watch of American officials — Saudi money and influence have transformed this once-tolerant Muslim society at the hem of Europe into a font of Islamic extremism and a pipeline for jihadists.

Kosovo now finds itself, like the rest of Europe, fending off the threat of radical Islam. Over the last two years, the police have identified 314 Kosovars — including two suicide bombers, 44 women and 28 children — who have gone abroad to join the Islamic State, the highest number per capita in Europe.

They were radicalized and recruited, Kosovo investigators say, by a corps of extremist clerics and secretive associations funded by Saudi Arabia and other conservative Arab gulf states using an obscure, labyrinthine network of donations from charities, private individuals and government ministries.

“They promoted political Islam,” said Fatos Makolli, the director of Kosovo’s counterterrorism police. “They spent a lot of money to promote it through different programs mainly with young, vulnerable people, and they brought in a lot of Wahhabi and Salafi literature. They brought these people closer to radical political Islam, which resulted in their radicalization.”

After two years of investigations, the police have charged 67 people, arrested 14 imams and shut down 19 Muslim organizations for acting against the Constitution, inciting hatred and recruiting for terrorism. The most recent sentences, which included a 10-year prison term, were handed down on Friday.

It is a stunning turnabout for a land of 1.8 million people that not long ago was among the most pro-American Muslim societies in the world. Americans were welcomed as liberators after leading months of NATO bombing in 1999 that spawned an independent Kosovo.

Photo

American bombing of Serbian positions in Kosovo in 1999 during the air campaign by NATO.CreditJerome Delay/Associated Press
After the war, United Nations officials administered the territory and American forces helped keep the peace. The Saudis arrived, too, bringing millions of euros in aid to a poor and war-ravaged land.

But where the Americans saw a chance to create a new democracy, the Saudis saw a new land to spread Wahhabism.

“There is no evidence that any organization gave money directly to people to go to Syria,” Mr. Makolli said. “The issue is they supported thinkers who promote violence and jihad in the name of protecting Islam.”

A portrait of Bill Clinton on a back street in Pristina near Bill Clinton Boulevard.CreditAndrew Testa for The New York Times
Kosovo now has over 800 mosques, 240 of them built since the war and blamed for helping indoctrinate a new generation in Wahhabism. They are part of what moderate imams and officials here describe as a deliberate, long-term strategy by Saudi Arabia to reshape Islam in its image, not only in Kosovo but around the world.

Saudi diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks in 2015 reveal a system of funding for mosques, Islamic centers and Saudi-trained clerics that spans Asia, Africa and Europe. In New Delhi alone, 140 Muslim preachers are listed as on the Saudi Consulate’s payroll.

All around Kosovo, families are grappling with the aftermath of years of proselytizing by Saudi-trained preachers. Some daughters refuse to shake hands with or talk to male relatives. Some sons have gone off to jihad. Religious vigilantes have threatened — or committed — violence against academics, journalists and politicians.

The Balkans, Europe’s historical fault line, have yet to heal from the ethnic wars of the 1990s. But they are now infected with a new intolerance, moderate imams and officials in the region warn.

How Kosovo and the very nature of its society was fundamentally recast is a story of a decades-long global ambition by Saudi Arabia to spread its hard-line version of Islam — heavily funded and systematically applied, including with threats and intimidation by followers.

Photo

Idriz Bilalli, an imam in Podujevo, has sought to curb extremists and has received death threats.CreditAndrew Testa for The New York Times
The Missionaries Arrive
After the war ended in 1999, Idriz Bilalli, the imam of the central mosque in Podujevo, welcomed any help he could get.

Podujevo, home to about 90,000 people in northeast Kosovo, was a reasonably prosperous town with high schools and small businesses in an area hugged by farmland and forests. It was known for its strong Muslim tradition even in a land where people long wore their religion lightly.

Gjilan, a town of about 90,000 where a moderate imam was kidnapped and beaten by extremists.CreditAndrew Testa for The New York Times
Threats Intensify
Within a few years of the war’s end, the older generation of traditional clerics began to encounter aggression from young Wahhabis.

Paradoxically, some of the most serious tensions built in Gjilan, an eastern Kosovo town of about 90,000, where up to 7,000 American troops were stationed as part of Kosovo’s United Nations-run peacekeeping force at Camp Bondsteel.

“They came in the name of aid,” one moderate imam in Gjilan, Enver Rexhepi, said of the Arab charities. “But they came with a background of different intentions, and that’s where the Islamic religion started splitting here.”

One day in 2004, he recalled, he was threatened by one of the most aggressive young Wahhabis, Zekirja Qazimi, a former madrasa student then in his early 20s.

Inside his mosque, Mr. Rexhepi had long displayed an Albanian flag. Emblazoned with a double-headed eagle, it was a popular symbol of Kosovo’s liberation struggle.

But strict Muslim fundamentalists consider the depiction of any living being as idolatrous. Mr. Qazimi tore the flag down. Mr. Rexhepi put it back.

“It will not go long like this,” Mr. Qazimi told him angrily, Mr. Rexhepi recounted.

Within days, Mr. Rexhepi was abducted and savagely beaten by masked men in woods above Gjilan. He later accused Mr. Qazimi of having been behind the attack, but police investigations went nowhere.

Ten years later, in 2014, after two young Kosovars blew themselves up in suicide bombings in Iraq and Turkey, investigators began an extensive investigation into the sources of radicalism. Mr. Qazimi was arrested hiding in the same woods. On Friday, a court sentenced him to 10 years in prison after he faced charges of inciting hatred and recruiting for a terrorist organization.

Before Mr. Qazimi was arrested, his influence was profound, under what investigators now say was the sway of Egyptian-based extremists and the patronage of Saudi and other gulf Arab sponsors.

By the mid-2000s, Saudi money and Saudi-trained clerics were already exerting influence over the Islamic Community of Kosovo. The leadership quietly condoned the drift toward conservatism, critics of the organization say.

Mr. Qazimi was appointed first to a village mosque, and then to El-Kuddus mosque on the edge of Gjilan. Few could counter him, not even Mustafa Bajrami, his former teacher, who was elected head of the Islamic Community of Gjilan in 2012.

Mr. Bajrami comes from a prominent religious family — his father was the first chief mufti of Yugoslavia during the Communist period. He holds a doctorate in Islamic studies. Yet he remembers pupils began rebelling against him whenever he spoke against Wahhabism.

He soon realized that the students were being taught beliefs that differed from the traditional moderate curriculum by several radical imams in lectures after hours. He banned the use of mosques after official prayer times.

Hostility only grew. He would notice a dismissive gesture in the congregation during his sermons, or someone would curse his wife, or mutter “apostate” or “infidel” as he passed.

In the village, Mr. Qazimi’s influence eventually became so disruptive that residents demanded his removal after he forbade girls and boys to shake hands. But in Gjilan he continued to draw dozens of young people to his after-hours classes.

“They were moving 100 percent according to lessons they were taking from Zekirja Qazimi,” Mr. Bajrami said in an interview. “One hundred percent, in an ideological way.”

Evening prayer at the mosque of the radical imam Fadil Musliu on the outskirts of Pristina, the capital.CreditAndrew Testa for The New York Times
Extremism Spreads
Over time, the Saudi-trained imams expanded their work.

By 2004, Mr. Musliu, one of the master’s degree students from Podujevo who studied in Saudi Arabia, had graduated and was imam of a mosque in the capital, Pristina.

In Podujevo, he set up a local charitable organization called Devotshmeria, or Devotion, which taught religion classes and offered social programs for women, orphans and the poor. It was funded by Al Waqf al Islami, a Saudi organization that was one of the 19 eventually closed by investigators.

Mr. Musliu put a cousin, Jetmir Rrahmani, in charge.

“Then I knew something was starting that would not bring any good,” said Mr. Bilalli, the moderate cleric who had started out teaching with him. In 2004, they had a core of 20 Wahhabis.

“That was only the beginning,” Mr. Bilalli said. “They started multiplying.”

Mr. Bilalli began a vigorous campaign against the spread of unauthorized mosques and Wahhabi teaching. In 2008, he was elected head of the Islamic Community of Podujevo and instituted religion classes for women, in an effort to undercut Devotshmeria.

As he sought to curb the extremists, Mr. Bilalli received death threats, including a note left in the mosque’s alms box. An anonymous telephone caller vowed to make him and his family disappear, he said.

“Anyone who opposes them, they see as an enemy,” Mr. Bilalli said.

He appealed to the leadership of the Islamic Community of Kosovo. But by then it was heavily influenced by Arab gulf sponsors, he said, and he received little support.

When Mr. Bilalli formed a union of fellow moderates, the Islamic Community of Kosovo removed him from his post. His successor, Bekim Jashari, equally concerned by the Saudi influence, nevertheless kept up the fight.

“I spent 10 years in Arab countries and specialized in sectarianism within Islam,” Mr. Jashari said. “It’s very important to stop Arab sectarianism from being introduced to Kosovo.”

Mr. Jashari had a couple of brief successes. He blocked the Saudi-trained imam Mr. Sogojeva from opening a new mosque, and stopped a payment of 20,000 euros, about $22,400, intended for it from the Saudi charity Al Waqf al Islami.

He also began a website, Speak Now, to counter Wahhabi teaching. But he remains so concerned about Wahhabi preachers that he never lets his 19-year-old son attend prayers on his own.

The radical imams Mr. Musliu and Mr. Sogojeva still preach in Pristina, where for prayers they draw crowds of young men who glare at foreign reporters.

Mr. Sogojeva dresses in a traditional robe and banded cleric’s hat, but his newly built mosque is an incongruous modern multistory building. He admonished his congregation with a rapid-fire list of dos and don’ts in a recent Friday sermon.

Neither imam seems to lack funds.

In an interview, Mr. Musliu insisted that he was financed by local donations, but confirmed that he had received Saudi funding for his early religion courses.

The instruction, he said, is not out of line with Kosovo’s traditions. The increase in religiosity among young people was natural after Kosovo gained its freedom, he said.

“Those who are not believers and do not read enough, they feel a bit shocked,” he said. “But we coordinated with other imams, and everything was in line with Islam.”

The entrance to the grounds of the Serbian Orthodox monastery in Decani in western Kosovo. In January, four armed Islamists passed through the checkpoint and were arrested at the monastery gates.CreditAndrew Testa for The New York Times
A Tilt Toward Terrorism
The influence of the radical clerics reached its apex with the war in Syria, as they extolled the virtues of jihad and used speeches and radio and television talks shows to urge young people to go there.

Mr. Qazimi, who was given the 10-year prison sentence, even organized a summer camp for his young followers.

“It is obligated for every Muslim to participate in jihad,” he told them in one videotaped talk. “The Prophet Muhammad says that if someone has a chance to take part in jihad and doesn’t, he will die with great sins.”

“The blood of infidels is the best drink for us Muslims,” he said in another recording.

Among his recruits, investigators say, were three former civilian employees of American contracting companies at Camp Bondsteel, where American troops are stationed. They included Lavdrim Muhaxheri, an Islamic State leader who was filmed executing a man in Syria with a rocket-propelled grenade.

After the suicide bombings, the authorities opened a broad investigation and found that the Saudi charity Al Waqf al Islami had been supporting associations set up by preachers like Mr. Qazimi in almost every regional town.

Al Waqf al Islami was established in the Balkans in 1989. Most of its financing came from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain, Kosovo investigators said in recent interviews. Unexplained gaps in its ledgers deepened suspicions that the group was surreptitiously funding clerics who were radicalizing young people, they said.

Investigators from Kosovo’s Financial Intelligence Unit found that Al Waqf al Islami, which had an office in central Pristina and a staff of 12, ran through €10 million from 2000 through 2012. Yet they found little paperwork to explain much of the spending.

More than €1 million went to mosque building. But one and a half times that amount was disbursed in unspecified cash withdrawals, which may have also gone to enriching its staff, the investigators said.

Only 7 percent of the budget was shown to have gone to caring for orphans, the charity’s stated mission.

By the summer of 2014, the Kosovo police shut down Al Waqf al Islami, along with 12 other Islamic charities, and arrested 40 people.

The charity’s head offices, in Saudi Arabia and the Netherlands, have since changed their name to Al Waqf, apparently separating themselves from the Balkans operation.

Asked about the accusations in a telephone interview, Nasr el Damanhoury, the director of Al Waqf in the Netherlands, said he had no direct knowledge of his group’s operations in Kosovo or the Balkans.

The charity has ceased all work outside the Netherlands since he took over in 2013, he said. His predecessor had returned to Morocco and could not be reached, and Saudi board members would not comment, he said.

“Our organization has never supported extremism,” Mr. Damanhoury said. “I have known it since 1989. I joined them three years ago. They have always been a mild group.”

Photo

Kosovars celebrating the independence of Kosovo from Serbia in 2008. CreditBela Szandelszky/Associated Press
Unheeded Warnings
Why the Kosovar authorities — and American and United Nations overseers — did not act sooner to forestall the spread of extremism is a question being intensely debated.

As early as 2004, the prime minister at the time, Bajram Rexhepi, tried to introduce a law to ban extremist sects. But, he said in a recent interview at his home in northern Kosovo, European officials told him that it would violate freedom of religion.

“It was not in their interest, they did not want to irritate some Islamic countries,” Mr. Rexhepi said. “They simply did not do anything.”

Not everyone was unaware of the dangers, however.

At a meeting in 2003, Richard C. Holbrooke, once the United States special envoy to the Balkans, warned Kosovar leaders not to work with the Saudi Joint Relief Committee for Kosovo, an umbrella organization of Saudi charities whose name still appears on many of the mosques built since the war, along with that of the former Saudi interior minister, Prince Naif bin Abdul-Aziz.

A year later, it was among several Saudi organizations that were shut down in Kosovo when it came under suspicion as a front for Al Qaeda. Another was Al-Haramain, which in 2004 was designated by the United States Treasury Department as having links to terrorism.

Yet even as some organizations were shut down, others kept working. Staff and equipment from Al-Haramain shifted to Al Waqf al Islami, moderate imams familiar with their activities said.

In recent years, Saudi Arabia appears to have reduced its aid to Kosovo. Kosovo Central Bank figures show grants from Saudi Arabia averaging €100,000 a year for the past five years.

It is now money from Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — which each average approximately €1 million a year — that propagates the same hard-line version of Islam. The payments come from foundations or individuals, or sometimes from the Ministry of Zakat (Almsgiving) from the various governments, Kosovo’s investigators say.

But payments are often diverted through a second country to obscure their origin and destination, they said. One transfer of nearly €500,000 from a Saudi individual was frozen in 2014 since it was intended for a Kosovo teenager, according to the investigators and a State Department report.

Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations were still raising millions from “deep-pocket donors and charitable organizations” based in the gulf, the Treasury under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, David S. Cohen, said in a speech in 2014 at the Center for a New American Security.

While Saudi Arabia has made progress in stamping out funding for Al Qaeda, sympathetic donors in the kingdom were still funding other terrorist groups, he said.

Today the Islamic Community of Kosovo has been so influenced by the largess of Arab donors that it has seeded prominent positions with radical clerics, its critics say.

Ahmet Sadriu, a spokesman for Islamic Community of Kosovo, said the group held to Kosovo’s traditionally tolerant version of Islam. But calls are growing to overhaul an organization now seen as having been corrupted by outside forces and money.

Kosovo’s interior minister, Skender Hyseni, said he had recently reprimanded some of the senior religious officials.

“I told them they were doing a great disservice to their country,” he said in an interview. “Kosovo is by definition, by Constitution, a secular society. There has always been historically an unspoken interreligious tolerance among Albanians here, and we want to make sure that we keep it that way.”

Albert Berisha, sentenced to prison for going to Syria to fight, says he did not join the Islamic State.CreditAndrew Testa for The New York Times
Families Divided
For some in Kosovo, it may already be too late.

Families have been torn apart. Some of Kosovo’s best and brightest have been caught up in the lure of jihad.

One of Kosovo’s top political science graduates, Albert Berisha, said he left in 2013 to help the Syrian people in the uprising against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. He abandoned his attempt after only two weeks— and he says he never joined the Islamic State — but has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison, pending appeal.

Ismet Sakiqi, an official in the prime minister’s office and a veteran of the liberation struggle, was shaken to find his 22-year-old son, Visar, a law student, arrested on his way through Turkey to Syria with his fiancée. He now visits his son in the same Kosovo prison where he was detained under Serbian rule.

And in the hamlet of Busavate, in the wooded hills of eastern Kosovo, a widower, Shemsi Maliqi, struggles to explain how his family has been divided. One of his sons, Alejhim, 27, has taken his family to join the Islamic State in Syria.

It remains unclear how Alejhim became radicalized. He followed his grandfather, training as an imam in Gjilan, and served in the village mosque for six years. Then, two years ago, he asked his father to help him travel to Egypt to study.

Mr. Maliqi still clings to the hope that his son is studying in Egypt rather than fighting in Syria. But Kosovo’s counterterrorism police recently put out an international arrest warrant for Alejhim.

“Better that he comes back dead than alive,” Mr. Maliqi, a poor farmer, said. “I sent him to school, not to war. I sold my cow for him.”

Alejhim had married a woman from the nearby village of Vrbice who was so conservative that she was veiled up to her eyes and refused to shake hands with her brother-in-law.

The wife’s mother angrily refused to be interviewed. Her daughter did what was expected and followed her husband to Syria, she said.

Secretly, Alejhim drew three others — his sister; his best friend, who married his sister; and his wife’s sister — to follow him to Syria, too. The others have since returned, but remain radical and estranged from the family.

Alejhim’s uncle, Fehmi Maliqi, like the rest of the family, is dismayed. “It’s a catastrophe,” he said.

 

[Neo]

1. Pakistan has been burning with anger since it's humiliating defeat in 1971.

The joke is on you, Indian slave state.
How many Bangladeshis fled to India and how are they treated?

Now it's fury has been rekindled with the execution of war criminals which Pakistan has been powerless to protect besides resolutions in parliament, and screaming and yelling generally.

They fought for Pakistan, we did our moral duty to show some respect. Even Turkey supported Pakistan's stance in this.

2. A lot of the Pakistani terror network in Bangladesh was dismantled in 2009.

You were kicked out as a state in 1971 and will need your proxies and assets to be eliminated.

More Indian dictated loose farts.
Btw, Good luck with your homegrown terrorist networks. Who will you blame now? Indian mullah Nayek?

Even the Afghans humiliated you in Torkham recently and the Afghans will be increasing their military power - to deal with your terrorist state - in the next few years, so make sure you don't lose western Pakistan (Pakhtunkhwa) like you lost in "east Pakistan" in 1971.

Humiliation? Omg, what planet are you from? We shelled the hell out of their post and continued building the fence. Next time they try, we'll bomb the shyt out of them, that much is well understood by Kabul.

Afghanistan asked for another extension for the 3 million refugees. Who is humiliated now?

 

[Neo]

Bangladeshi rich kids who grew up to be 'jihadists'
By AFP
Published: July 4, 2016
23SHARES
SHARE TWEET

A woman speaks before leaving a floral arrangement at a road block leading to an upscale cafe that was the scene of a bloody attack in the Bangaldesh capital Dhaka on July 16, 2016. PHOTO: AFP

DHAKA: Well-educated and hailing from wealthy families, the gunmen who killed 20 hostages in a Bangladesh cafe defy the increasingly outdated stereotype of militants from poor backgrounds who have been radicalised in madrassas.

Six young men were shot dead Saturday at the end of the all-night siege in a Dhaka cafe claimed by the Islamic State group.

One may have been an innocent bystander, but among the remaining five are a graduate of Bangladesh’s leading private university, an 18-year-old student at an elite school and the son of a ruling party official.

Bangladesh police trying to confirm ID of Dhaka attackers

As militant groups such as IS focus their recruitment efforts on disenfranchised middle class youth, government efforts to eradicate extremism become ever more complicated.

“They are all highly educated young men and from well-off families,” Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told AFP. Asked why they would have become ‘jihadists’, Khan said: “It has become a fashion.”

While the Bangladesh government has continued to deny IS has a foothold in the country, the group claimed the attack and its associated news agency, Amaq, posted pictures of the five gunmen posing with weapons.

Similarly in militancy-ravaged Pakistan, the government denies that the international militant network has a formal presence in the country.

But a Pakistani security official recently told AFP that authorities had busted several IS recruitment cells focused on a similar affluent demographic.

Hostage-takers were from Bangladesh group, not Islamic State: minister

Taj Hashmi, a Bangladeshi who teaches security studies at the Austin Peay State University in the United States, pointed out that many of the Saudi hijackers behind the September 11 attacks were also from wealthy families.

But he says that middle-class youth have been providing Islamist terror groups with footsoldiers since long before the emergence of IS.

“Marginalised and angry people from the higher echelons of society have been swelling the ranks of Islamist terrorists for the last 30-odd years,” he said.

Bangladeshi authorities have so far only released code names of the cafe assailants after interrogating a gunman who was captured alive, but they have released photos of their bloodied corpses.

Friends of one confirmed his identity as 22-year-old Nibras Islam who had been studying at the Malaysian campus of Australia’s Monash University before going missing in January.

A school friend remembered him as popular pupil.

“He was a good athlete whom everyone admired,” the friend told AFP on condition of anonymity.

After leaving school, Nibras went to North South University (NSU), a private university which came to prominence when one former student tried to bomb the Federal Reserve Bank in New York in 2012.

Bangladesh in mourning after hostage bloodbath

In early 2013, seven NSU students hacked atheist blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider to death, kickstarting a campaign of murders of secular activists. At their subsequent trial, prosecutors said the students had been radicalised through the Internet.

Another of the cafe attackers was identified by multiple sources as Mir Saameh Mubasheer, who was due to sit his A-levels at Scholastica, an elite English language school, but disappeared in February.

His father Mir Hayat Kabir told the Prothom Alo daily that he had feared his son, who was 18, had been brainwashed.

“I felt in my heart that he was under someone’s spell. We were good parents yet they took him away from our home,” he said.

Yet another of the attackers was identified as Rohan Imtiaz who also reportedly studied at Monash in Malaysia after leaving Scholastica where his mother teaches.

His father, Imtiaz Khan Babul, is a former youth affairs secretary of the Dhaka wing of the ruling Awami League. He filed a missing person’s report for his son in January.

Monash said it was aware of reports that some of the killers had studied in Malaysia but added in a statement that it “has not received, nor seen, any official confirmation” of the identities.

Only one of the five attended a madrassa, the son of a labourer who has been named as Khairul Islam Payel.

20 foreigners killed in Dhaka cafe siege: army

Some analysts attribute the rise in extremism in the South Asia region to the preachings of radical Saudi-trained clerics in madrassas, religious seminaries that are often the only way for poorer families to give their children an education.

But Mubashar Hasan, an expert on political Islam at Dhaka’s Liberal Arts University, described that narrative as misleading.

“Many so-called experts of Bangladesh have been writing and blaming only madrassas for terrorism,” said Hasan.

“Many foreign governments and agencies have spent millions in cash for projects on reforming and modernising madrassa education… What are (they) going to reform now? The liberal universities and English medium schools whose curriculums are embedded on Western enlightenment?”

http://tribune.com.pk/story/1135941/bangladeshi-rich-kids-grew-jihadists/

 

[adrenalin]

The joke is on you, Indian slave state.
How many Bangladeshis fled to India and how are they treated?


They fought for Pakistan, we did our moral duty to show some respect. Even Turkey supported Pakistan's stance in this.


More Indian dictated loose farts.
Btw, Good luck with your homegrown terrorist networks. Who will you blame now? Indian mullah Nayek?


Humiliation? Omg, what planet are you from? We shelled the hell out of their post and continued building the fence. Next time they try, we'll bomb the shyt out of them, that much is well understood by Kabul.

Afghanistan asked for another extension for the 3 million refugees. Who is humiliated now?

whore country begging always for aid money talking like US. Afgahn ana beat shit out of paki army, killed ur major like pig, no shame? your forefather is one of 93000 pows coward pak army who surrender to indian army, still no shame?

 

[AnantS]

Its funny to see a wannabe Arab deracinated Pakis insulting Bangladeshis who are proud of their ethnicity and their culture. Bangladesh has higher GDP, lesser inflation, less un-employent rate and inspite of being much smaller than Pakisatan, they have slightly less overall GDP rank than Pakis.
No wonder Pak is Satan.