U.S. Shuts Embassy In Sarajevo
The U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo shut down all operations Friday, two days after closing to the public after receiving word of a possible terrorist threat, an embassy official said.
The embassy reduced operations Wednesday and closed its public services, and on Friday, ``new information was received in regards to the earlier security report that prompted us to take further precautionary measures and close the embassy entirely,'' spokeswoman Karen Williams said.
``We are reassessing the situation continually and will reopen when appropriate,'' she said.
No other details about the nature of the threat were made available.
The U.S. and British embassies closed for several days in October, citing terrorist threats. They reopened after Bosnian police arrested six Algerians who were suspected of plotting post-Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. interests in the country and elsewhere.
The suspects were handed over to U.S. authorities in January, and are now being held at the base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Five of the six were humanitarian aid workers; one was suspected of serving as Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant for Europe.
Following the arrests, Bosnia's government ordered an investigation into the work of foreign humanitarian agencies. Two weeks ago, investigators reported funds were missing from three Islamic charities.
Bosnian police on Tuesday raided one of those charities, Bosnian Ideal Future, formally known as the Benevolentia International Foundation. A police statement said some employees of the charity were conducting activities unrelated to humanitarian work. It did not elaborate.
Sarajevo's daily Oslobodjenje newspaper reported Friday that police could not find a direct link between the charity and global terrorist groups, although they allegedly found ``several secret documents related to state security.''
The documents contained hints that the current head of the charity, whose name has not been released, was trained in an Iranian-led camp in Bosnia after the 1992-95 war, the newspaper said. The camp was raided by NATO troops in 1996 and then closed.
The seized documents apparently contained a plan to assassinate one of Bosnia's opposition leaders at the time and a list of names of those who were trained in the camp as well as the names of their Iranian instructors, Oslobodjenje reported.
More than 1 million Muslims live in Bosnia, including several hundred Islamic fighters, or mujahedeen, who came mostly from the Middle East to fight on the Muslim side in the war against the Serbs and Croats.
About 3,100 U.S. troops are stationed in the country with the NATO-led peacekeeping force.
By: Alexandar S. Drabicevic