Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 05/06/2026; Author: Amar Karađuz
What are the claims?
Al-Qaeda was created by the CIA in Sarajevo in 1991 or 1992. Terrorist training camps still exist in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
What are the facts?
The terrorist network Al-Qaeda was established in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Institutions, reports and experts agree that there are no organized terrorist training camps in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
On 28 May 2026, BN Television’s website published an article about a programme in which former senior Serbian security officials discussed the alleged threat of Islamist terrorism in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Kosovo, as well as the roots of these threats in the 1990s war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
CIA created Al-Qaeda in Bosnia and its camps still exist
The CIA created Al-Qaeda in Bosnia, specifically in Sarajevo, and many of its members who trained on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina later carried out terrorist attacks across the Western world, former senior Serbian police and State Security officials Milan Glamočanin and Radoslav Karlo Dulović said on BN Television’s programme Globalno.
The article also highlights claims made by the two guests that foreign fighters in Bosnia and Herzegovina were granted Bosnian citizenship and that some of the perpetrators of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington received military flight training in England after spending time in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“In 1991 and 1992, the central global terrorist organization Al-Qaeda was formed here in the Balkans. In Sarajevo. In 1991 and 1992, the French and the British brought in two thousand terrorists, and Alija granted them citizenship. Among them were intelligence structures that still exist today in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska.
Many terrorists went on from here to receive further training. Four pilots graduated from the aviation and parachute school in ‘Krefild’ near London, and they were excellent students. I have reliable information about three of them, though not about the fourth. The question is, since it was a military academy, how did these terrorists complete their training, how were they transferred from London to America, and how did they board the planes used in the attack on the Twin Towers?”
The article further states that Radoslav Dulović claimed that the current Mufti of Banja Luka had previously served as Mufti of Travnik and had cooperated with “foreign intelligence services and jihadists.”
“The Mufti from Travnik, who is now in Banja Luka, cooperated all along with foreign intelligence services and jihadists. He is now the chief Mufti in Banja Luka,” said former senior Serbian State Security official Radoslav Karlo Dulović.
The article concludes by asserting that terrorist training camps still exist in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in other parts of the region with significant Muslim populations.
Glamočanin and Dulović claim that terrorist training camps still exist in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Sandžak…
The full recording of the Globalno programme was published on BN Television’s YouTube channel on 27 May 2026.
In addition to claims about the terrorist threat in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the programme’s guests made numerous assertions regarding the breakup of Yugoslavia, international conspiracies and intelligence services, presenting historical and political developments as part of coordinated processes directed by centres of power outside the region.
What are the Facts?
Milan Glamočanin and Radoslav Dulović are generally described in the media as they were in the BN Television programme and article. Glamočanin is described as a former senior officer of the Yugoslav federal police and an official of the State Security Service, while Dulović is referred to as a former intelligence officer and security expert.
The segment in which Radoslav Karlo Dulović discusses Al-Qaeda in Bosnia and Herzegovina begins at 01:01:10 in the programme published on YouTube. However, the claim that the Al-Qaeda terrorist network was established in Sarajevo in 1991 or 1992 has no basis in historical fact.
The origins and history of this terrorist organization are well documented today. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Al-Qaeda is a militant Islamist organization founded by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in the late 1980s. It gained global notoriety following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 in New York and Washington, which killed several thousand people.
Initially, it operated as a logistical support network for Muslim fighters in the war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, recruiting members from various parts of the Islamic world.
After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, the organization dispersed but continued opposing what its leaders viewed as corrupt Islamic regimes and foreign, primarily American, presence in Muslim countries. Based in Sudan for part of the early 1990s, the group eventually re-established its headquarters in Afghanistan (around 1996) under Taliban protection.
The role of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in financing and arming Islamist fighters (the Mujahideen) during the Soviet-Afghan War, which began with the Soviet invasion in 1979, has been documented as part of the covert Operation Cyclone. This support helped strengthen prominent figures such as Osama bin Laden, who would later become the leader of Al-Qaeda. However, although U.S. support for the Afghan Mujahideen is well documented and indirectly contributed to the later emergence of Al-Qaeda, there is no evidence that the CIA founded the terrorist network.
Al-Qaeda in Bosnia and Herzegovina?
The claim that foreign governments “brought” two thousand foreign fighters into Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1991 or 1992 is inaccurate. During the 1992 – 1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a number of foreign fighters did arrive in the country and operated within the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina through the El Mujahid unit. According to a 2015 BBC article on the subject, several dozen arrived in 1992, after the outbreak of the war. Their presence became more significant in 1993. Some had connections with international Islamist networks, and some sources indicate that certain individuals were linked to Al-Qaeda.
After the war, some foreign fighters remained in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and some were granted Bosnian citizenship and travel documents by the authorities in Sarajevo – for example, Arabs who had married Bosnian citizens or who could not safely return to their countries of origin. These citizenships were later reviewed, and some were revoked.
Following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, international scrutiny intensified regarding individuals who had acquired Bosnian citizenship during the war. That year, six Algerian-born Bosnian citizens were arrested in Sarajevo on suspicion of planning an attack on the U.S. Embassy. Although Bosnian courts found insufficient evidence to prosecute them, they were handed over to U.S. authorities and transferred to Guantánamo Bay.
During the same period, Bosnia and Herzegovina launched a review of wartime and post-war naturalizations. According to data published by the European Commission in early 2002, citizenship was revoked from 94 individuals found to have obtained it irregularly during the war, while reviews of post-war naturalizations continued.
The report of the U.S. 9/11 Commission states that Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, two of the hijackers involved in the 2001 attacks, had previously spent time in conflict zones during the 1990s, including Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995. They hijacked the aircraft that crashed into the Pentagon, but neither of them was a pilot.
In addition to these two, the Commission report states that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the principal architects of several of Al-Qaeda’s most significant terrorist operations, including the 11 September attacks, stayed in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992. At the time of the attacks, however, he was in Pakistan, where he was arrested in 2003.
Claims that all four pilots who flew the hijacked aircraft on 11 September had previously fought in Bosnia and Herzegovina and received flight training near London are false. The biographies of all four pilots are well documented. None fought in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and all had their flight training in the United States, not in the United Kingdom.
The first aircraft to strike the World Trade Center in New York was piloted by Mohamed Atta. The second was flown by Marwan al-Shehhi. The aircraft that crashed in a field in Pennsylvania after passengers resisted the hijackers was piloted by Ziad Jarrah. The aircraft that struck the Pentagon was piloted by Hani Hanjour.
The Mufti of Banja Luka
The article states that the programme's guests discussed alleged links between the Mufti of Banja Luka, foreign intelligence agencies and "jihadists." No evidence was presented to support these allegations, and it was claimed that the current Mufti of Banja Luka had previously served as Mufti of Travnik. However, the current Mufti of Banja Luka, Ismail ef. Smajlović, was born in Zvornik, and his biography published on the website of the Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina contains no indication that he ever served as Mufti of Travnik.A conspiratorial narrative
The discussion on BN Television was dominated by an overtly conspiratorial narrative. Dulović claimed that both the first and second Yugoslavia were projects with predetermined “expiration dates” and that the breakup of socialist Yugoslavia had been planned decades in advance. As evidence, he referred to allegedly classified intelligence documents stolen in Switzerland in 1987, which he claimed contained a plan for Yugoslavia’s dissolution and the names of domestic politicians connected to foreign intelligence services. In the same context, he also claimed that decisions about the fate of states are made at meetings in Davos and that Turkey sought to restore its influence in the Balkans through the so-called “Green Transversal” project.
These claims were presented by former members of state security services and accepted without scrutiny as “insider knowledge.” Such framing can create an impression of credibility among audiences. However, no verifiable evidence was provided to support these assertions.
This interpretation of events also served as the basis for claims that Bosnia and Herzegovina faces a serious Islamist terrorist threat. This is a narrative that has circulated for years in parts of the media and political sphere, portraying Bosnia and Herzegovina as a centre of radicalism and a security threat to the region and beyond. However, such claims are largely exaggerated and unsupported by the actual security situation.
In a Raskrinkavanje analysis published in November 2025 examining Dževad Galijašević’s claims that all terrorist attacks worldwide are linked to Bosnia and Herzegovina, the following was noted regarding counterterrorism cooperation in the country:
Since 2006, the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina has adopted a new Strategy for the Prevention and Fight against Terrorism every five years. In 2020, the Agreement on Mutual Assistance and Operational Cooperation in the Fight against Terrorism between all police agencies in Bosnia and Herzegovina entered into force. Counterterrorism units and departments within state and entity police agencies have operated for decades. These units have carried out operations such as “Damask” in 2014, when SIPA arrested 16 individuals suspected of terrorism and recruitment for ISIL in several cities, and “Svjetlost” in 2010, the largest post-war police operation conducted in Gornja Maoča.
All Bosnian citizens who returned from the Syrian battlefield have been criminally prosecuted, while women and children have been reintegrated into their local communities.
Claims that terrorist training camps exist in Bosnia and Herzegovina are false. This was confirmed in 2015 by the then Minister of Security of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dragan Mektić, and in 2024 by Armin Kržalić, professor at the Faculty of Criminalistics, Criminology and Security Studies. The same conclusion was reached by the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) in its 2023 report on terrorism trends and activities in Europe. The section covering the Western Balkans (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia, and Kosovo) states that no major terrorist or violent extremist organizations operate in the region. Instead, isolated individuals and small local groups exist that are not hierarchically organized but communicate and exchange similar content with like-minded groups abroad via the internet.
Based on the facts, we rate the claim made during the Globalno programme that Al-Qaeda was founded in Sarajevo in 1991 or 1992 as fake news and a conspiracy theory. We give the same ratings to the claim that the four pilots involved in the 11 September 2001 attacks had previously fought in Bosnia and Herzegovina and completed their flight training near London.
The claim that the Mufti of Banja Luka previously served as Mufti of Travnik is rated as fake news. The same rating applies to the claim that terrorist training camps exist in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The same claims published in BN Television’s article receive the ratings of spreading fake news and a conspiracy theory.
