by Amra Hadziosmanovic
SARAJEVO - Twelve years on, Bosnia is going after hundreds of foreign Islamic volunteers who came to fight in the 1992-1995 civil war but whose presence has seen the country branded a potential hotbed for terrorism.
The backlash, which saw authorities revoke citizenship for 500 men, has angered rights groups and former volunteers -- some now family men with children -- who say they are being sacrificed in Bosnia's bid to join the European Union and NATO.
But Vjekoslav Vukovic, head of the official commission set up 18 months ago, is adamant.
He said three of the men are "on the United Nations Security Council's list of persons linked to Al-Qaeda," though their whereabouts were unknown.
Between 70 and 100 others fought in a Bosnian army unit notorious for criminal behavior, the El Mujahed unit, whose commander is on trial at the UN warcrimes court.
"Bosnia will no longer be hostage of a small group of people whose presence stains the country's image," Vukovic told AFP.
Pressure has come notably from Washington with its post-9/11 war on terror but also from its Western allies who, like Sarajevo itself, want to see Bosnia anchored in Euro-Atlantic institutions.
In early August, Raffi Gregorian, a US diplomat in Bosnia, warned that "certain intelligence agencies consider Bosnia-Hercegovina as one of Al-Qaeda's transit points," and that the terror network receives help from Islamic veterans of the Bosnian war.
The comment was immediately slammed as "incorrect" and "ill-intentioned" by the head of Bosnia's Islamic community Mustafa Ceric. "For we Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) it is Islamophobia," he said.
Vukovic said the probe targets at least 1,300 people who obtained citizenship during and after the war, more than half of them Arabs.
"The vast majority of those who have lost Bosnian citizenship are not in the country," said security ministry official Izet Nizam.
"Those who are still in the country are to be deported once they exhaust all legal means for providing other bases for their residence here, such as a temporary residence permit or political asylum," Vukovic added.
Fifteen of the former fighters have taken their cases to court but no decision is expected for a few months.
The Bosnian branch of Helsinki Committee for Human Rights has also questioned the crackdown, saying many former volunteers will face separation from local wives and children.
One is Amad Al Husin, also known as Abu Hamza, who said he feels betrayed by Muslim politicians who "want to please Americans."
"We came to Bosnia at the beginning of the war to help our brothers, nothing more," said Hamza, who said he arrived in former Yugoslavia from his native Syria in the early 1980s to study medicine.
He married a Bosnian widow and adopted her three children before the couple had three more of their own, now aged nine, 12 and 13, and he vowed he would only leave "by force."
"Our problem is purely political and not a legal one," Hamza railed.
But the government dismisses this, saying those targetted had either incomplete, falsified or irregular documents. "Our work was based strictly on the law. There was no political influence on my team," Vukovic said.
Though Sarajevo completed talks with the EU in December, Brussels has been pushing for more reforms before signing an association agreement seen as the first step on Bosnia's long path toward full membership in the 27-nation bloc.
The country is still prey to nationalist sentiment, which triggered the bloodshed of the 1990s, and still ethnically divided into two post-war entities -- the Serbs' Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation.
An EU diplomat in Sarajevo who asked not to be named, told AFP that the level of terrorist threat in Bosnia, which is 40 percent Muslim, is the same as in any other European country.
But "solving the issue of citizenships granted during the war would give a strong signal that Bosnia has improved its security and rule of law," he said.
For Sarajevo political analyst Senad Slatina, the foreign Islamic fighters who came during the war is "a very delicate political issue that has been burdening Bosnia for a long time."
"It has been put on the table whenever the international community wanted to turn up pressure on (Bosnian Muslim) politicians," Slatina said.
Though the Islamic volunteers were ordered to leave under the 1995 Bosnian peace deal, some stayed on after obtaining citizenship.
After the 9/11 attacks in 2001, they came under scrutiny, notably the 500 who were part of the El Mujahed unit set up by Rasim Delic, the wartime commander of the mainly Muslim Bosnian army. His trial at the UN court in The Hague focusses on the unit's alleged atrocities, including murder, torture, beatings, rape and beheadings.
In 2002, six terror suspects of Arab origin linked to the Al-Qaeda network were arrested in Bosnia and handed over to the US authorities.
Aiman Awad, another Syrian facing deportation who like Hamza fought with El Mujahed, said, "we will leave Bosnia-Hercegovina but we will be back to claim huge compensation.
"Every tear my children shed will have to be compensated," he cried.
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09/05/2007 04:09 GMT