source: Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily

Exclusive. From GIS Station Priština. Sources within the NATO force command in the Serbian province of Kosovo have indicated that there is concern with the organization that the murder of four Serbs in Kosovo at the beginning of September 2005 was part of a greater plan by KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) Albanians to begin to exacerbate disorder as part of the agitation for the interdependence of the area from Serbia. The riots in March and June 2004 resulted in 19 Serbian deaths, 900 injured and more than 4,000 people displaced from their homes. Many Serbian villages were destroyed.

NATO fears have been strengthened by intelligence derived by Western countries on the existence of a strong Islamist network in Kosovo and Bosnia. Specifically, the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) confirmed that the terrorist attacks in Madrid and London were organized by Islamic cells in Bosnia and Kosovo. The German press agency DDP (Das Deutschland-Portal) reported that the BND forewarned about the new terrorist attacks in London, which were carefully organized in Kosovo.

The secret service of a Balkan country, which works actively in the area, reported to GIS that one of the most dangerous Islamist terrorists in the world, who was involved in the bombing attack against US and German soldiers in the beginning of 1990 in Germany, has returned to the area from Pakistan in early September 2005.

His name is Abdul Qadir Mukhtari, whose Bosnian passport identifies him as Abu al-Ma’ali. He is often also referred to as Abu-Ma’ali, a nom de guerre which he adopted during the 1990s. He rose rapidly through the ranks in Bosnia-Herzegovina ending up as the commander of the Mujahedin Brigade (3rd Bde). Until 2001-02 (at least), he was also a prominent member of bin Osama Laden’s/Ayman al-Zawahiri’s shura (consultative high command council) dealing with remote jihadist theaters. In this capacity he held extensive correspondence with Khattab in Chechnya (until the Russians killed him). GIS Senior Analyst Yossef Bodansky noted: “Abu-Ma’ali is a senior and nasty guy. His presence on-site should be taken most seriously.”

Abu al-Ma’ali was involved in the Bosnian war in the early to mid-1990s, and he had founded the terrorist organization HUA (Harkat ul-Ansar), with some 200 Pakistanis of British nationality, who were trained in Pakistan by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). [Harkat ul-Ansar (later known as Harkat ul-Mujahedin) was heavily involved in jihadist operations in Indian-controlled Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), operating from bases in Pakistan, and had undertaken training during the Taliban rule in Afghanistan at Khost and Jalalabad with the objective that combatants would subsequently be deployed in J&K.]

The second-in-command was the British-Pakistani, Haroun Rashid Asouat (as heard; correct spelling not known), who is wanted in the United Kingdom by Scotland Yard. According to former US Federal prosecutor John Loftus, Haroun was recruiting volunteers for Kosovo. Mr Loftus also accused the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS/MI-6) of protecting Haroun because he was allegedly an SIS agent.

According to an interview given by a British Labour Party member of the Parliament, Michael Meacher, to the UK newspaper, The Guardian, SIS recruited Muslim British-Pakistanis in Britain for terror training in order to fight against Serbia in Bosnia. The MP also reported to the research foundation, The Observer Research Foundation, based in Delhi, India, information that 200 Pakistanis from Great Britain were sent to Pakistan in order to be trained on terrorist activities. This information was also confirmed by sources in the Dutch Government, which reported that Great Britain and the United States had permitted terrorist organizations to operate in Bosnia and later in Kosovo.

Sources from the area report that Haroun transferred many members of the terrorist organization al-Muhajiroun group into Kosovo during the Summer of 2005 and these were integrated with the members of HUA.

Two young Pakistanis of British nationality were blown up recently in Kosovo, while they were testing the linkage of a cell phone to a remotely-controlled bomb. The two young men participated in seminars organized by an institute – Renaissance of the Islamic Heritage – which is based in Sarajevo and which has a branch office in Priština. Abu el-Maali was recently moved from Kosovo to Sarajevo, where he installed a cell for recruiting Islamists in the “King Fahd” mosque in the suburb of Dobrinja.

Abu el-Maali is one of the very well known mujahedin leaders, and he has returned in the Balkans from Pakistan, where, according to very reliable Islamist sources, he was meeting members of al-Qaida in order to organize their activities in the area and also in Europe.