Terror attacks in Kosovo "not question of if, but when"

Terror attacks in Kosovo "not question of if, but when"

Kosovo police spokesman Baki Kelani said on Monday that the persons in question were arrested for illegal possession of weapons.

Abbot of Visoki Decani Sava Janjic reacted to this with a post on Twitter, calling the statement "a pathetic downplaying of a possible serious incident and insult to common sense."

The Serbian side is clear on this being an attempted terrorist attack, while the Kosovo authorities see it as an ordinary situation where four persons were arrested near a monastery only for illegal possession of weapons.

Those detained carried an AK-47 (Kalashnikov) rifle, several rounds of bullets, a pistol, and Islamist literature. Serbian Government Office for Kosovo Director Marko Djuric found the Kosovo police statement "cynical."

"It is completely clear this is about religious and political extremists and fundamentalists who had come either to intimidate someone or attempt something even worse. And so I think the provincial institutions ought to be approaching this issue with due seriousness, rather than instrumentalize and used it as an unfounded means to protect those responsible for such behavior. I think that this behavior is radicalism and terrorism and should be qualified as such by the judicial authorities," Djuric said.

Terrorism experts say that neither Serbia nor Kosovo should take such cases lightly, adding that this incident "constitutes a threat to the whole of Kosovo society."

"The question is not of whether Islamists will begin to carry out attacks in Kosovo - it is when they will begin. According to some reports over 200 people left the area of Kosovo and Metohija to join the ranks of Islamic State as fighters, while an undetermined number of Albanians from Kosovo went to Syria and Iraq via third countries, and are still there. It should be kept in mind that the Islamic network is very present in Kosovo, very strong," said Faculty of Security professor Zoran Dragisic.

Regardless of the problems between Kosovo and Serbian sides, the fight against terrorism should be a shared activity.

"Islamic State is the new fact both for us and for European countries. So these incidents happening here represents a special problem for us. The fact is there are already thousands of people from the Balkans who are fighting in the ranks of IS and that their tentacles are very present here. On the other hand I think that citizens should not be alarmed," said Dragisic.

Kosovo Deputy Interior Minister Milan Radojevic, meanwhile, has announced that the investigation against the four arrested over the weekend will be expanded to determine whether there are elements of terrorism or religious extremism in this case.

Abbot reacts to Kosovo police claims

Reacting to the Kosovo police statement, Sava Janjic said on Monday that "the appearance of armed persons with Islamist literature is far from an ordinary case of illegal weapons possession" and that those detained were "definitely not tourists."

"The police must investigate what they were doing armed in the vicinity of the monastery at night. (Baki) Kelani's hasty statement that armed Wahhabis have nothing to do with terrorism is an insult to common sense and is damaging for Kosovo police credibility," the Visoki Decani abbot wrote, noting it was "not true that the police stopped the car with the suspects."

Janjic said the CCTV footage shows it was the Islamists themselves who had stopped the car in front of the monastery, while a police patrol arrived later, "checking their documents and searching the car."

This material has been shown to the local police chief, he stated, adding that Kelani had given "incorrect statements without learning the facts beforehand, without anyone from the KPS (Kosovo police) requesting to see the video files immediately after the incident."

Janjic's statement added that "publishing arbitrary information is creating an impression of downplaying of the case for unknown reasons, which is not to the benefit of Kosovo citizens regardless of their ethnic or religious background as terrorism is a danger for all."

This approach of the police "also damages the already diminished confidence of the Church" regarding the protection of those SPC sites no longer protected by KFOR, he said.

The abbot urged the police to inform the public of all the details of the case, hoping that this incident will not be "one among the many which have remained unsolved."