By: Julia Gorin
Republican Riot

This incident happened less than a week after a Bosnian-involved Aussie terror plot was foiled, and at the very police station where former NY cop Bob Leifels did a 1997-98 stint as international police.

Gunman Shouting Allahu Akbar in Bosnia Storms Police Station (AP; ABCNews.com, Apr. 27)

A gunman stormed into a police station in a northeastern Bosnian town shouting “Allahu akbar” on Monday, killing a policeman and wounding two others, authorities said.

The gunman was also killed during the attack in the town of Zvornik….The Bosnian Serb police chief, Dragan Lukac, identified the man as Nerdin Ibric.

Here comes the requisite retro-justification part of any MSM report when Serbs are targeted:

Zvornik is a town in the Bosnian Serb part of the country and it is located on the border with Serbia. Before the 1992-95 war, about 60 percent of the town’s population was Muslim Bosnians. Almost all were expelled and many were killed during the war as part of a Serb campaign to create a purely Serb area.

(Notice also the requisite omission of the population-trades that all three sides engaged in, called “ethnic cleansing” only when the Serb side did it. Nor is the reader given to understand that “many were killed” as fighters, not in civilian-massacres, as it’s made to sound, or that the Serb ambition wasn’t to create pure areas but to prevent war. Ethnic purity was a result of the war that the Serbs’ enemies and Washington, Bonn, and Vatican so wanted.)

Serbs managed to control half of Bosnia by the time the U.S. brokered a peace agreement in 1995 under which each warring party could keep their conquered territory. This is how the country ended up divided into two fairly autonomous regions — one for the Serbs, the other shared by Muslim Bosniaks and Croats. The two have their own governments, but are linked by a central government based in Sarajevo.

After the war, only a few thousand Muslims returned to the Serb area of Zvornik.

How many Serbs returned to this or that area of Muslim-won ground, we’re not told. But here’s just one random, May 2010 example of what happens when they do:

Bosnian Muslim high school students in the city of Maglaj went out on the streets to intimidate ethnic Serb returnees….parad[ing] with traditionally green Islamic flags and shouting anti-Serbian slogans….Bosnian Muslim police did nothing to enhance security. One of the Serb returnees, Vjekoslav Lazic, said that…life of ethnic Serbs is under threat. “We asked the authorities in the Serb Republic to help us so that we can collectively leave”….During Easter, Muslims in Maglaj invited local Serbian Orthodox priests to convert to Islam…Additional “invitations” were nailed to the doors of houses owned….Christian clergy approached the chief Maglaj imam to intervene but Imam Izudin Kruska told them that the problems…have not been organized by the Islamic Community of Maglaj. Dzevad Galijasevic, himself a former Mayor of Maglaj, says that Islamic extremism is on the rise in the city. Galijasevic, who is a member of anti-terrorism task force for the Balkans, warned that Maglaj Muslims are being systematically radicalized.

And a 2007 item:

70 villages in Bosnia, home to 15,000 Serb returnees, have reportedly been without electricity for several years. Media in the Republic of Srpska reported that…local Bosnian Muslim and Croat municipal authorities “deliberately bypassed Serb villages when it came to restoration of infrastructure destroyed during the 1990s war.” The period between 1992 and 1995 saw the expulsion of the Serb population from more than three hundred major settlements that now belong to the Muslim-Croat federation.

And have you seen Sarajevo lately? (Bosnia: Muslims dominate capital, claims Croatian MP — The Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, once a symbol of ethnic diversity, has become an entirely Muslim city, a Croat deputy in the Bosnian Parliament, Branko Zrno, said…Serbs and Croats in Sarajevo have no institutional protection, and continue to leave the capital…Serbs claim that in the city of 400,000 only 7,000 Serbs have remained, compared to 160,000 before the 1992-1995 civil war…Muslim President of the Bosnian Helsinki committee for human rights, Srdjan Dizdarevic, said in a recent interview that Sarajevo had become a “monoethnic” city… “Ethnic cleansing in this city has, unfortunately, been successfully completed. If the will exists to reconstruct Bosnia on multiethnic principles, one should start with Sarajevo,” he concluded. But as ethnic tensions deepened, the Muslim chairman of a three-man rotating state presidency, Haris Silajdzic, on Wednesday launched a fresh attack on the Serb entity. Silajdzic repeated earlier claims that the Serb entity is a “symbol of genocide” allegedly perpetrated by its first president, Radovan Karadzic… “The international community is obliged to remove consequences of the genocide,” Silajdzic added, referring to the Serb entity. […])

Back to the AP article about the shooting:

…The Bosnian Serb government will hold an overnight emergency session and the regional president, Milorad Dodik, told Bosnian Serb TV he believes the attacker was instructed by someone else even though he acted alone.

Lukac, the police chief, called on citizens to help police.

“We will fight against them and we will never forgive them, but police can’t do it alone. We need the citizens to help,” Lukac said, without specifying who he meant by “them.”

[Whom do you want him to mean?]

The imam of the Zvornik mosque, Mustafa Muharemovic, condemned the attack.

Of course he did. It also doesn’t hurt that minorities such as he have it good in the Serb part of Bosnia.

A weekend report from the Serb Republic News Agency:

FACT THAT AMBASSADORS ARE TURNING A BLIND EYE CANNOT DISPUTE THE ATTACK

GRADISKA, May 1 /SRNA/ – Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik said today in Gradiska that even though the ambassadors in BiH are turning a “blind eye” this cannot change and dispute the fact that Republika Srpska institutions were attacked in a terrorist attack in Zvornk.

“The police officer was wearing a uniform [with] insignia of Republika Srpska. There was not a single insignia of BiH [Bosnia-Herzegovina] there. When you [certain ambassadors] try to express your condolence to Bakir Izetbegovic [BiH president and son of the late fundamentalist wartime president Alija Izetbegovic] who is hesitating to take a political action to fight politically-motivated Islam and radical Islam, this speaks how much you want to distort facts in BiH,” Dodik told reporters in Gradiska.

[Politically-motivated and radical Islam. Perhaps that answers the AP reporter’s question above, as to whom police chief Lukac might have been referring to?]

Dodik said that the facts are that Republika Srpska was attacked, that a Republika Srpska police station was attacked and that a police officer, a Serb from Republika Srpska, was killed.

“I still very clearly say that a huge majority of Bosniaks are peaceful people, that we want peace and coexistence with them, but we also want an energetic fight against all those who bring violence, regardless of their motives,” Dodik said… “Everything is politics for them [foreign ambassadors distorting the target]. Of course, they have never dropped [the idea] to degrade and abolish Republika Srpska in a peaceful way, but also to strengthen BiH…” He said that this is a twisted approach by a segment of the IC [international community]….

“Republika Srpska police force does not exist in the FBiH [the Muslim-Croat Federation], in Brcko District, or in joint BiH institutions; it is a body of Republika Srpska, a body that was established by Republika Srpska laws and constitution which also represents a right that was given us by the Dayton Peace Agreement,” Dodik has concluded.

Two more AP reports follow. Watch how the whole thing morphs into a contemplation on supposed Serb bellicosity:

Police station attack in Bosnia reignites ethnic tensions

The killing of a policeman by a Muslim gunman prompted Bosnian Serb leaders on Tuesday to renew calls for independence from the federation forged in a U.S.-brokered peace deal in 1995. That’s dangerous talk in the Balkans, whose economically depressed states are rife with ethnic rivalries and border disputes that could explode at any moment.

The attack came only a week after a group of 40 masked gunmen forcibly took over a police station in a Macedonian border village, calling themselves members of the Kosovo Liberation Army that fought for independence from Serbia in the late 1990s. The attackers declare they were forming an independent state in Macedonia, another former member of Yugoslavia. [More on that to come.]

In the wake of Monday’s attack, the Bosnian Serb leader, who has been pushing for independence for the Serb region of Bosnia, said the country’s central institutions are “useless” and Bosnian Serbs should form their own intelligence service.

“This was a shot against Republika Srpska (the Bosnian Serb mini-state) and we have the right to defend ourselves and we will,” Milorad Dodik said.

A similar call was made by the Bosnian Serbs in 1992, which triggered their armed rebellion against Bosnia’s referendum for independence and in favor of forming a pan-Serbian state in the Balkans. [Whereas the rest of us would have no problem living under an Islamic regime.]

Bosnia has a national army, consisting of all three ethnic groups under a single command. But it has two separate police forces, one for the Bosniaks and Croats, and the other for Bosnian Serbs. Both forces are coordinated by the Ministry of Security.

In theory, Dodik could mobilize his own force, drawing from his region’s police officers and other fighters who might support the idea of secession from Bosnia. But that would be a serious violation of the Dayton agreement.

Emir Suljagic, from the Bosnian Democratic Front Party, said, “those who are trying to cynically use this event for gaining political points should be cautious and learn from the lessons of the past when major violence started with big words.”

Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic struck a more conciliatory stand on Tuesday, saying Bosnia’s stability has to be preserved and that Serbian and Bosnian security services must cooperate “in order to prevent provocations like this in the future.”

“Risks of similar attacks are high in our region, most of all from the radical Islamist movement,” he said.

On Tuesday, Bosnian police arrested two men with suspected links to the gunman in Zvornik.

New details begun [sic] to emerge about the gunman, identified as 24-year-old Nerdin Ibric, with residents from his village saying his father was taken away by Serbs in 1992 at the start of Bosnia’s brutal multi-ethnic war and never seen again. Local media reported that Serb police rounded up the father along with 750 Muslims from the town and killed them all.

Considering that killings on such a mass scale have yet to be demonstrated as real even for Srebrenica, this is to be taken with a grain of salt. But what one can take away from the detail of the father being led away, if that’s true, is the same lesson as that of the 2007 Trolley Square massacre in Salt Lake City: Like father, like son. A Bosnian “defender” breeds a jihadi offspring. And yet we’re supposed to believe that the Serbs weren’t dealing with anything related to jihad.

One of the suspects taken into custody on Tuesday is known to police and has been questioned in the past for possible Syria ties and recruitment efforts for the Islamic State group, Bosnian Serb police chief Dragan Lukac said.

Bosnian security analyst Goran Kovacevic said, “This country is living in an atmosphere of war. All the people now in power emerged during the war,” he said. “Even 20 years later, they base their politics on war rhetoric and spread fear.”

The final AP article, from Thursday:

Bosnian Authorities Identify Police Station Attack Suspects (Apr. 30)

Bosnian authorities on Thursday identified two suspects arrested in connection with a fatal attack on a police station, including one already under investigation for allegedly helping to recruit fighters for the Islamic State group.

Prosecutors identified the two suspects as 24-year-old Avdulah Hasanovic, and 40-year-old Kasim Mehidic. The men were arrested on Tuesday.

Hasanovic was detained last year in a sweep against Islamic extremists who allegedly recruited people to fight for IS in Syria. He was later released, but his passport has been confiscated and he has had to regularly report to authorities. The group’s leader is on trial.

Radical Muslims were non-existent before the 1992-95 war in the Balkans when foreign mujahedeen arrived in Bosnia to help the Muslim Bosniaks fight against Serbs and Croats. Most of them left after the war but had managed to spread their ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam among a few thousand locals, who stand out amid the majority moderate and secular Bosnian Muslims. [Ah, I almost thought they’d forgotten to include that mantra.]

Bosnian Serb police chief Dragan Lukac said the investigation so far shows the gunman Nerdin Ibric was connected to such extremists.

Experts say some 200 Bosnians are fighting in Syria. IS recruiters mostly target young, jobless men with no hope for a better future in a country with an unemployment rate of more than 40 percent. The 24-year-old gunman fit this profile and was the son of a man who was killed during the war when Serb police from Zvornik rounded up over 700 Muslim men from the once predominantly Muslim town and executed them as part of a campaign to create a pure Serbian area.

Bosnia’s Islamic Community condemned the attack and said the perpetrator’s background is no excuse for committing such a crime.

That’s refreshing. Now if only the MSM could figure it out.