American Council for Kosovo - Islamic Terror in Kosovo

Hysen Sherifi, Accused Terrorist Plotter, Wanted To Kill Witnesses: FBI

RALEIGH, N.C. -- A North Carolina man sentenced to prison recently as part of a homegrown terrorist ring has been accused in a federal court document of plotting to kill witnesses who testified against him at trial.

An affidavit unsealed in federal court Monday accuses Hysen Sherifi of plotting against the witnesses from his jail cell. Authorities say an FBI informant posing as a hit man met with Sherifi's brother and a female friend and accepted $5,000 and a photo of an intended victim.

FBI agents have arrested the brother, Shkumbin Sherifi, and Nevine Aly Elshiekh, a school teacher. Now in federal custody at the New Hanover County Jail, each is charged with a felony count of use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire.

Hysen Sherifi, 27, was sentenced to 45 years in prison earlier this month in what prosecutors described as a conspiracy to attack the Marine base at Quantico, Va., and targets abroad. Five others, including construction contractor Daniel Patrick Boyd, have been sentenced to federal prison terms for terrorism charges related to raising money, stockpiling weapons and training in preparation for jihadist attacks.

No charges have been filed at this time against Hysen Sherifi related to the new plot, according to a search of a federal court database.

Shkumbin Sherifi and Elshiekh await a scheduled first appearance Friday in federal court in Wilmington. The two have applied for court appointed lawyers, who have not yet been assigned.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Raleigh has released no information about those arrested.

In a 10-page affidavit filed under seal Friday, FBI Special Agent James Langtry writes that he developed a source as a confidential informant inside the New Hanover County Jail near Wilmington, where Hysen Sherifi was sent after a jury convicted him in October.

The informant soon befriended Sherifi, who requested help in hiring someone to kill three people who had testified against him at his trial, according to the affidavit. Sherifi specified that he wanted the witnesses beheaded and that he would be provided photos of the severed heads as confirmation of the deaths, according to the document.

FBI agents said in the document that they arranged for a second informant to pose as a hit man and monitored Sherifi during a series of jailhouse visits with Elshiekh.

Following a Dec. 21 visit at the jail, Elshiekh left a voicemail on the fake hit man's cell phone, identifying herself as "Hysen Sherifi's friend," according to the affidavit. It added that the FBI observed and recorded subsequent meetings between Elshiekh and the fake hit man, during which she provided names, addresses and photos of those targeted and $750 in cash toward the first murder.

Agents also observed Elshiekh meeting with Shkumbin Sherifi, who met with the FBI's fake hitman on Jan. 8, the court document said. According to the affidavit, the brother traveled from Raleigh to Wilmington to provide the hit man another $4,250 in cash.

The affidavit provides no information about the nature of the relationship between Hysen Sherifi and Elshiekh, but a woman with that same name was quoted in media reports from last year's terrorism trial in New Bern. The names of the witnesses allegedly targeted were redacted from the affidavit.

Nevine Elshiekh is listed as a special education teacher on the website for Sterling Montessori Academy, a charter school in Mooresville. Bill Zajic, the school's executive director, did not return a message from the Associated Press on Tuesday.

No one answered the phone at Elshiekh's Raleigh home Tuesday.

The Sherifi brothers and other family members emigrated from Kosovo following the wars that ravaged the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. A call to the Sherifi family home in Raleigh on Tuesday was not returned.

Hysen Sherifi and others arrested in the terrorism conspiracy were members of the Islamic Association of Raleigh, the largest Muslim congregation in the Triangle. Several members of the mosque also routinely made the 4-hour round trip for the trial in New Bern to support the accused, who they described as innocent men being railroaded by overzealous federal authorities.

Messages to the media contact listed for the mosque were not returned.

Embassy attack highlights Balkan Islamists

BELGRADE, Serbia � The young man wore a long beard and pants that stopped above his ankles. He sprayed the U.S. embassy in Bosnia with machine gun fire.

Friday's incident in Sarajevo, in which the gunman and a police officer were wounded but no one died, was the latest in a series of incidents in eastern Europe involving Wahhabis - followers of an austere brand of Sunni Islam promoted by radicals, including the Taliban and al-Qaida fighters.

The recent rise of militant Wahhabis and other Islamic radicals across the Balkans - including in Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro and even European Union member Bulgaria - has triggered concerns that the region could become a breeding ground for terrorists with easy access to Western Europe or the U.S.

The shooter in Friday's incident, 23-year-old Mevlid Jasarevic, came from Serbia - the southern region of Sandzak, a Wahhabi stronghold - but also had strong links with a conservative Bosnian Muslim village that has attracted police attention in the past.

Authorities across the Balkans say that not all Wahhabis are militants, and not all militants are Wahhabis. But they say the radical anti-Western Islamic teaching has the potential for creating terrorist cells that support the sect's militants rooted in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Many fear that militant Wahhabis and other extremist Muslims from the Balkans could slip across borders and blend into Western societies before conducting terrorist attacks.

There have already been incidents. In March, a Kosovo Albanian acting alone fatally shot two American airmen in Frankfurt. In 2008, three ethnic Albanian brothers originally from Macedonia were implicated in a plot to attack the U.S. Army's Fort Dix military base in New Jersey.

In March 2007, a police raid on what Serbian authorities said was a mountain terrorist camp unveiled a large cache of weapons, ammunition, hand grenades and plastic explosives. Twelve Wahhabis were later sentenced to lengthy prison terms, including on convictions that they planned terrorist attacks against the U.S. embassy in Belgrade.

"At this moment, the radicals cannot topple governments or trigger wars," said Dragan Simeunovic, a political science professor at Belgrade University and terrorism expert. "What they can do are sporadic terrorist attacks."

But, if they grow in numbers because of financial support from some Muslim countries, "we could expect bigger problems in the Balkans," he said.

The presence of radical Muslims in the war-ravaged Balkans is linked to mujahedeen foreign fighters who joined Bosniak Muslims in their battle against the Serbs in Bosnia's 1992-95 war for independence.

The Islamic fighters in Bosnia were largely tolerated by the U.S. and the West because of their opposition to former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic's quest to create a "Greater Serbia" out of the former Yugoslav republics.

The issue of radical Islamic influence is particularly politically charged in Bosnia, a country divided between Bosniak Muslims, Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs. The Serbs maintain there is a huge presence of Wahhabis in the country, while Bosniaks downplay the problem and at times claim it does not exist.

Bosnian terrorism expert Vlado Azinovic said the divided and "dysfunctional" state of Bosnia does not have enough internal capacity to deal decisively with militant groups.

As a result, police complain they are not getting sufficient support to prevent terrorist attacks such as the one on Friday, or last year's bomb attack by a group of Wahhabis on a police station in the central town of Bugojno, in which one policeman was killed and several others injured.

"If you talk to law enforcement officials, they would tell you that they could deal with this problem decisively if there was political will, but unfortunately we have not seen that political will for way too long," Azinovic said.

According to Bosnia's intelligence agency, there are about 3,000 followers of Wahhabism in Bosnia, though not all of them could be considered a security threat.

Bosnian police on Saturday launched a massive operation against a conservative Muslim community in the northern mountain village of Gornja Maoca, the second such raid in the village in a year.

The remote village, where children are taught according to the austere Muslim school programs and women are clad head to toe, had been under continuous police surveillance.

So was Jasarevic, a Muslim from Serbia, who often visited there.

He was also known to police elsewhere. Serbian police said he was briefly arrested a year ago for brandishing "a large knife" during a visit by the U.S. Ambassador to Serbia to Novi Pazar, the administrative center of the Sandzak region. He was reportedly deported in 2008 from Austria after a robbery in Vienna, which is thought to be Europe's spiritual center of Wahhabism.

Serbian police on Saturday briefly detained 17 people in Sandzak who were alleged to be Jasarevic's associates. v Since the 2007 arrests, the ultraconservatives have reduced their presence in Novi Pazar, a town of 100,000 that is nearly 90 percent Muslim. Many are believed to have fled to neighboring Kosovo or Bosnia, escaping the police crackdown.

"The Wahhabi movement is no longer a problem in Novi Pazar, some of its individuals are," Serbian police Director Milorad Veljovic said.

Charges filed in slayings of U.S. airmen in Germany

(CNN) -- A man accused of killing two United States Air Force servicemen outside an airport in Germany was charged on Tuesday in a formal complaint filed by the U.S. Department of Justice.

The suspect, Arid Uka, also known as "Abu Reyyan," was arrested in March after he allegedly opened fire on an Air Force bus outside Frankfurt International Airport on March 2.

Uka, 21, is accused of shooting and killing Nicholas Alden and Zachary Ryan Cuddeback of the U.S. Air Force and injuring two other servicemen. He is in German custody and will be brought to New York for trial, according to U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.

According to the complaint filed Tuesday, Uka shot Alden in the head before boarding the bus and shooting Cuddeback. He then continued to fire, injuring two other servicemen while shouting "God is great," the complaint said.

When his weapon jammed, Uka ran from the bus and was later arrested by German police, the complaint said.

According to German officials, Uka later confessed to the shooting and said he was motivated to carry out the attack after watching an Internet video he said showed U.S. soldiers raping Muslim women.

Uka is a Muslim from Kosovo who was influenced by radical Islamist websites, German authorities said.

He is being held on five counts, including two counts of premeditated murder of an officer of the United States and one count of attempted murder of officers.

Kosovo: Muslims turn church into public toilet, waste dump

It sure is great that the U.S. fought to "liberate" these people!

Islamic Tolerance Alert from modern, moderate, pro-American Kosovo: "Church in Samodreza turned into public toilet again," from emg.rs, June 11 (thanks to Hugo):

The Orthodox Christina [sic] temple in the village of Samodreza, near Vucitrn, in northern Kosmet, has been desecrated again.

The Kosmet Strategic Network NGO, which gathers 70 Serb organizations of that type, has communicated that few days ago the church was broken into and turned into a public toilet and waste dump.

The attacks on this church have been going on constantly even after the arrival of international forces in 1999, when the sanctity [sic] was burned from inside.

The Strategic Network reminds that in the previous period the Albanian community has, on several occasions, blocked the process of renovation of the church in Samodreza, while some 20 families that used to live in the village have been forcefully expelled.

Bogdanovic condemned desecration of church in Kosmet

Serbian Minister of Kosmet Goran Bogdanovic has severely condemned the desecration of the Orthodox church in the village of Samodreza in Kosmet, and asked for perpetrators to be found and punished immediately.

The desecration of the church prior to the great holiday of St. Vitus day represents a message to the Serbs, i.e. what is the attitude of the local Albanian community and the provincial government towards them, pointed Bogdanovic.

He has added that it has once more been shown that the Kosmet police is unable, and often unwilling, to protect the Serb churches, monasteries and cultural monuments....

Muslims enraged by jihadist persecution of Christians worldwide statue of Mother Theresa

Islamic supremacist persecution of Christians in Egypt, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Indonesia? No problem. A statue of Mother Theresa? Now that's going too far!

"Kosovo Muslims Resent New Mother Teresa Statue," by Petrit Collaku for Balkan Insight, May 26 (thanks to Twostellas):

Muslims in the western town of Peja are far from happy with the town council's decision to let a US-based Albanian society put up a statue to Mother Teresa.

A Muslim youth group in Peja, the Muslim Youth Forum, has asked the mayor to withdraw the decision, saying it does not represent the interests of the Muslim community and is an insult to a town that is 98 per cent Muslim.

The group said it had collected 2,000 signatures already on a petition opposing the statue, and if statues were to go up at all, they should be of heroes from the independence war with Serbia.v

"This decision by the authorities has been lobbied for and financed by the Catholic Church's service service, Opus Dei," Noli Zhita told Balkan Insight.

He said that many Muslims of Peja felt insulted by the decision, which formed part of an ongoing plan to Christianise the public space in Kosovo.

The youth group said a further point was that Mother Teresa was neither a true Albanian, nor from Kosovo.

"She was of Vlach origin, born in Macedonia. She is not an Albanian," Zhita said.

The celebrated and now beatified Catholic missionary, famed for her work in the slums of India, had done nothing for Kosovo or Peja but had spent her life serving a foreign religious organisation, they said.

So far, the mayor of Peja is no mood to back down.

The municipality responded positively on March 11 to the request from a group known as the Council for Mother Teresa Statues, run by Catholic Albanians in New York, asking for space in town to put up the statue.

Mayor Ali Berisha said he had received the letter of protest from the Muslim youth group on Wednesday.

But, downplaying the relevance of Mother Teresa's religious identity, he said her work for the poor and dying transcended the whole issue.

'I think that there should not be a religious connotation to this question, but a humanitarian one alone,' Berisha told Balkan Insight.

One might have thought so, yes.

He said the request for the statue had been discussed several times in the local assembly and a majority of councillors had decided in favour.

He also said he had discussed the matter with head of Islamic Community in Peja who showed no sign of disagreement.

'We will go ahead with our plan,' Berisha said.

The Muslim community in Kosovo has felt on the backfoot lately. Although comprising the vast majority of the 2 million or so population, the small Catholic community has often been better at headline-grabbing initiatives in recent years.

A new Catholic cathedral, also named after Mother Teresa, was inaugurated in the centre of the capital, Pristina, last September, and is still under construction.

The Muslim community claimed the cathedral was far too large for the needs of such a small religious community, while adding that Muslim believers often could not get into mosques for prayers because they were too few and too small....

"The Muslim community claimed the cathedral was far too large for the needs of such a small religious community." That's interesting. The same thing could be said of the Ground Zero Mosque. Indeed, the leaders of the Ground Zero Mosque initiative have done their best to obscure the small size of their community, even going so far as to close some neighboring mosques in order to swell the numbers at the Ground Zero Mosque site.