Traduzione inglese dell'articolo: "Attentato jihadista in Bosnia: 'È collegato a Bilal Bosnic'"

Sarajevo

One policeman was killed and two others were wounded on Monday evening when an armed gunman parked his car in front of the police station in Eastern-Bosnian town of Zvornik, and started shooting. Zvornik is a town in Bosnia’s Serb-dominated autonomous region, Republika Srpska, which together with the Bosniak-Croat Federation makes up the Bosnia and Herzegovina that emerged from the 1992-95 war. According to the police, the attacker was shouting "Allahu Ekber" ("Allah is great" in Arabic) during the shoot-out. The offical police sources say that the attacker was armed with several types of guns, ammunition supply, a bullet-proof vest, and that he was killed after he has been shot shot seven times by the policemen. Policemen who were injured during a shootout are hospitalized, and they are out of life danger.

Both Bosnian State Prosecutor Office and the State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA), who are in charge of the investigation, labeled the Zvornik police station shooting as terrorism, as it was confirmed to Il Giornale by the spokesman for the prosecution office, Boris Grubešić.

"As ordered by the Chief Prosecutor, an on-site investigation was conducted in the course of the previous night and forensic traces were taken from the crime scene", Grubečić told Il Giornale, adding that further investigative actions will be conducted to establish the motives of this attack and connection of other persons or accomplices who participated in the commission of the criminal offense in question. A special investigation team has been formed, consisting of Prosecutors from the Section for Terrorism of the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as of Investigators and Legal Officers who will work on the investigation in this case.

The attacker was identified as 24-years old Nerdin Ibrić from Kučić Kula near Zvornik. Bosnia's daily newspaper Dnevni Avaz claimed that his father was among 750 Bosniaks from Zvornik, who were killed during the war in Eastern Bosnia by the members of the Serb police, military and Serb paramilitary forces during the raid in 1992, while Ibrić was only one year old. Thus, some of the local media are speculating that his attack might be an act of revenge, too.

According to SIPA's spokeswoman Kristina Jozić, one person has been taken into custody, suspected to be connected with the terrorist attack, while several others have already been questioned. "One person, with initials A.F.H, was apprehended this morning by the members of the joint investigation team", Jozić told Il Giornale. The person was detained at the police station of the Regional Office of SIPA in Tuzla, she maintained, adding that he will be handed over to the Prosecutor's Office for further investigation.

Il Giornale's source from the investigation team, who asked to remain anonymous, told us that Avdulah Hasanović a.k.a. Fatih, who was intensively spending a lot of time during the last several months with the police station attacker Ibrić, was taken into custody this morning. The same source maintained that Hasanović was previously known to the security agency, as he was previously questioned as a suspected member of ISIS in Syria.

Hasanović was arrested in September 2014, according to the source, after he returned from Syria, during the police campaign dubbed "Damascus", at the same time with Hussein Bilal Bosnić, who is believed to be one of the leaders of the so-called Wahhabi movement in Bosnia, and who is probed before the State Court for his public calling of men to jihad and promoting terrorism. According to the local Bosnian media outlets, Hasanović was a frequent visitor of Bilal Bosnić's lectures.
Both Prosecutor's Office and SIPA refused do comment on this, in order not to jeopardize the investigation in this case.

"This is the worst terrorism attack that could happen in the Republika Srpska", the RS interior minister Dragan Lukač said last night, adding that security levels had been raised after the attack. The interior minister also noted that a man from attacker's village said he had acted in a strange way in recent days and prayed in a local mosque in a way typical for the members of the so-called Wahhabi movement.

During recent years two similar attacks occured in Bosnia: in Bugojno, in Central Bosnia, in 2010, when the police station was bombed, and an attack on the US embassy in the capital Sarajevo in 2011.

Most Bosnian Muslims practice a moderate form of Islam, but some have become radicalized after the 1992-95. war, in which most victims were Muslims. The government estimates that up to 200 have gone to Syria and Iraq to fight for the Islamic State group, although unofficially that number is considered to be significantly higher.

Thousands of Muslim Bosniaks were expelled from Zvornik by Serb forces during the war but some have returned after the war.

According to the media reports from the villages surrounding Zvornik, the returnees - predominantly Bosniak muslims - are now afraid that this event might disturb the fragile ethnic relations in the region, and in the whole country as well.