“At 5 a.m. this morning, police launched an operation against the extremist Islamic Wahhabi movement in Novi Pazar, Sjenica and Tutin,” Dacic said in a statement. AL ARABIYA – AGENCIES
Serbian police Saturday arrested 15 people in the Muslim-populated area of Sandzak after a suspected radical Islamist opened fire on the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo, local media reported. “This morning at 5:00 am (0300 GMT) a (police) operation was launched against the extremist Islamist Wahhabi movement in the territory of Novi Pazar, Sjenica and Tutin,” Interior Minister Ivica Dacic told the Tanjug news agency. All three towns are in southwestern Serbia with large Muslim communities. Police searched some 18 locations and seized a number of computers, CDs, SMS cards and books, Dacic said. Police in Serbia said they had conducted raids in three towns in southwestern Serbia, including the mainly Muslim Novi Pazar, the hometown of the gunman identified as 23-year-old Mevludin Jasarevic. Police searched some 18 locations and seized a number of computers, CDs, SMS cards and books, Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said. “At 5 a.m. this morning, police launched an operation against the extremist Islamic Wahhabi movement in Novi Pazar, Sjenica and Tutin,” Dacic said in a statement. Fifteen people were arrested and police seized mobile phones and computers. Serbian media reported that police had stepped up security around the U.S. embassy in the capital, Belgrade. Security officials in Bosnia said that Jasarevic, who was convicted of robbery in Austria in 2005 and deported to Serbia, had entered Bosnia on Friday morning and had visited hard-line Islamists in the northern Bosnia earlier in the year. The Novi Pazar region has been raided before. In 2007, police uncovered what it said was an Islamist “terrorist” training camp, seizing plastic explosives, grenades and automatic weapons.