BOSNIAN CONSERVATIVE MUSLIM VILLAGE RAIDED BY POLICE

Bosnian police have launched a massive operation against a conservative Muslim community, to prevent what they called attempts to destabilise the country.

Hundreds of police officers raided the mountain village of Gornja Maoca in northern Bosnia.

• The village is home to Bosnian followers of Wahhabism, a strict form of Sunni Islam.
• Some 600 officers surrounded the village before raiding it on Monday morning, the spokesman added.
• It was the biggest police operation in Bosnia since its 1992-1995 war, said the state prosecutor's office.
• Security forces closed off the isolated northern village, which is near the northern city of Brcko and has around 100 residents, while the raid was in progress.
• "The goal of this operation... is to identify people accused of endangering the territorial integrity of Bosnia-Hercegovina, threatening the constitutional order and promoting national, racial and religious hatred," Boris Grubesic, the prosecutor's spokesman, told AFP news agency.
• Local radio reported that several people were arrested - including Wahhabi cleric Nusret Imamovic - and ammunition was seized, but this was not confirmed by police.
• Originating in the Arabian peninsula, Wahhabism forms the basis for the ideology followed by al-Qaeda and the Taleban.

Source: BBC