Page 40 - Cyber Terrorism and Extremism as Threat to Critical Infrastructure Protection

SECTION I: EXTREMISM, RADICALIZATION AND CYBER THREATS AS AN IMPORTANT
SECURITY FACTORS FOR COUNTERING TERRORISM PROCESSES

nocence and avoided prosecution by paying “penalties” whereby such people were not pros-
ecuted, although they were indisputably found to have committed these activities that the law
incriminates. Such behaviour by state structures and the judiciary will not achieve the “deter-
rent effect”, which is essentially the primary task of such a law in the process of preventing
and combating violent extremism and terrorism” (Ogrizović, 2018, e-source).

3.3 Case Study of Bosnia and Herzegovina

The political situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina is very complex. Three nationalities live
here: Croats, Serbs and Bosnians. This political division represents a huge problem for Bosnia
and Herzegovina.

The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in the 1990s had foreign fighters for the first time;
Mujahedin “FTFs have been coming to BiH since the beginning of 1992, led by the global
jihad ideology, where that same ideology would lead its citizens to other countries with the
same goals and motives” (Šikman, 2018, p 121). Since the war, due to the composition of
the population, which has been predominantly Muslim for over 2000 years, BiH has been
concerned about possible terrorist actions, including the development of illegal groups. It is
known that there are many Wahhabi villages in BiH; one of the best known is a village called
Maoča, the most infamous place of radical Islam. “The most famous and notorious preacher
of radical Islam in Bosnia, who ended up behind bars, was Bilal Bosnic, who in his village
of Gornja Maoca created an unofficial recruitment centre where people from all over Bosnia
and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro would come for what Bosnic described as religious
education. Later, many of them would end up in Syria and Iraq.” (Mejdini et al., 2017, e-
source). “It was established during this research that the largest number of BiH volunteers in
Syria and Iraq have come from well-known Salafi communities, such as in Gornja Maoca or
Osve in the north-eastern part of the country. More than 60% have spent time in these com-
munities, visiting or maintaining contact with residents” (Azinović and Jusić, 2015, p 37).

How serious the problem BiH has with terrorism is shown by the fact that one of the most
wanted terrorists in the world, Mirsad Kadić, who was the self-styled “Head of the Intelli-
gence Service” of IS, was arrested in BiH. Similarly to Kosovo, BiH has had problems with
strong extremism and radicalism since the 1990s. Because of this situation, BiH was forced to
bring in new laws to be able to include itself in the fight against terrorism; the New Strategy
for the Fight Against Terrorism in BiH, and the Strategy for the Prevention of Money Laun-
dering and Financing Terrorist Activities. The BiH Strategy leaned on the Strategy of the EU
for preventing and combating terrorism.

The goals of the Strategy are:
• The prevention of crime, radicalism and terrorism in all their forms;
• Securing critical infrastructure;
• Improving procedures in investigations and processing terrorist violations and related
crimes;
• The reaction to possible terrorist attacks and recovery afterwards.

Other than this, the Plan for Civil-Military Cooperation was made to respond to terrorist at-
tacks and to deal with the consequences. This Plan has the goal of preventing and minimizing
the consequences of possible terrorist attacks.

40