The Balkans - a hub of worldwide terrorist network

This list includes the following incidents:

The November 2003 al Qaeda bombings of two synagogues, the HSBC Bank and the British Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey; the alleged ringleader, Syrian-born Louai al-Sakka, had also been planning to blow up an Israeli cruise ship off the Turkish coast when he was arrested in August 2005, had previously participated in the Bosnia jihad effort, and claims to have trained some of the 9/11 hijackers in Turkey





The summer 2005 arrests in Italy of a Bosnian Muslim involved with a plot to bomb world leaders gathered in Rome for the funeral of Pope John Paul II in April





The August 2005 arrest in Serbia of Moroccan Abdelmajid Bouchar, a fugitive from the Madrid attacks seeking to escape into the Balkans





The October 2005 arrests in Bosnia of several young Bosnian Muslims who, in cooperation with religious peers elsewhere in Europe, had acquired explosives for an attack on Western embassies in Sarajevo; the group had links with the late al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi





The UN police in Kosovo’s 2005-2006 surveillance of North African terrorist suspects fleeing Western Europe and taking refuge in ‘safe houses’ in Pristina





The September 2006 arrest in Norway of Pakistani al Qaeda operative Arfan Qadeer Bhatti, a close associate of Kosovo Albanian heroin smuggler Princ Dobrosi; Bhatti had planned to bomb the American and Israeli embassies in Oslo





The December 2006 detention in Treviso, Italy of several Bosnian and Macedonian Muslims; some were reported to be involved with weapon smuggling from Turkey and potential terrorist attacks; several were deported





The February 2007 arrests in Bulgaria of four Bulgarian Muslims involved with local and Arab groups glorifying the Chechen jihad and advocating a Sharia state in Bulgaria





The Serbian police’s March 2007 seizure of heavy weaponry and other military paraphernalia from a mountain camp run by a Wahhabi group of Bosnian Muslims from Novi Pazar, in the Sandzak region of western Serbia; the weapons were later confirmed to have come via Kosovo





The November 2007 Macedonian police operation in a mountain village near the Kosovo border, which seized weaponry sufficient ...