Kosovo Arrests 15 over Promoting Radical Islam
One of Kosovo's leading Muslim clerics was among 15 people arrested by police on Wednesday for recruiting people to join the jihad in Iraq and Syria, local media reported.
Police confirmed they had targeted 16 locations and detained 15 people across Kosovo in the second operation of its kind since August, but did not give details of those arrested.
Local media said imams from several cities were detained, including Kosovo's top radical cleric, the imam of the Grand Mosque in Pristina, Shefqet Krasniqi.
The vice chairman of radical Islamic political party LISBA, Fuad Ramiqi, was also arrested, according to media reports.
The imams are suspected of preaching extremism and helping to recruit for radical groups fighting in Iraq and Syria, local media said.
In mid-August, Kosovo police arrested 40 people on similar charges. Weapons, ammunition and explosives were seized as special police units raided 60 locations across Kosovo, including makeshift mosques believed to have served as recruiting centres.
Earlier this month, a Kosovo journalist said he had received dozens of threats via social networks, some of them threatening him with beheading, for drawing attention to the rise of Muslim extremism.
Journalist Visar Duriqi, who specialises in political Islam, said most of the threats came after the murder of U.S. journalist James Foley, who was beheaded by a member of the Islamic State group on August 19.
Kosovo, with a population of 1.78 million is a Muslim-majority country, although religion plays only a minor part in public life and tends to take a very moderate form.
Nonetheless, local media say as many as 150 Kosovars are thought to have volunteered to fight in the Syrian civil war against the forces of President Bashar Assad. Police say at least 16 have been killed in Iraq and Syria so far.
Source: Agence France Presse
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