Outrage Over War Led Bosnian to Syria

A member of the hardline Muslim Salafi movement, Ibrahim Delic says curiosity and a feeling of solidarity led him from his village of Gornja Bocinja near Maglaj to the war in Syria in the summer of 2013. He is now on trial for joining a terrorist unit.

Delic, who turned 45 in January, is severely disabled and can only walk on crutches.

He told BIRN that his life changed forever in 1992.

During the 1992-95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, he lived in Zeljezno Polje, near Zepce, with his father and mother. The family practiced the traditional Bosnian version of Islam at the time, and Delic felt he knew little about his faith.

At 24, he joined the local unit of the Bosnian Army.

In the autumn of 1992, meanwhile, a group of foreign fighters – so-called Mujahideen – came to the area where he lived. They started to hang out and went to fight together, and over time Delic accepted their militant Salafi version of Islam as well.

“I would say we understood Islam for real and accepted Islam for real. We tapped into Islamic laws for real – let’s say it like that,” Delic explains.

During the war, he became a ‘moral commander’ of his unit and one of its officers.

“A person who is a moralist gives lectures and leads actions,” he clarified, aslo saying that he had been wounded twice.

Horrified by news from Syria

After the war ended in 1995, Ibrahim toured the country giving lectures on faith.

In 2005, he went to Damascus in Syria with his family in order to educate himself further about his religion.

But they did not stay for long. They returned home after only a year because Ibrahim saw “that things won’t end well, America was already making threats [against Syria]”. Soon after, they bought a house in Gornja Bocinja.

Fighting between President Bashar al-Assad’s government and Islamist rebels trying to overthrow his regime broke out in Syria in 2011.

As Delic followed the reports from Syria via the internet and television, he felt shaken by the crimes he saw.

“What upset me most was seeing children on the internet killing women and men – the suffering,” he recalled.

“The Bosnian war flashed before my eyes. I knew I could not fight [there] but I wanted to see and at least show up, and give my support to those people,” he said.

As the conflict in Syria continued, the influence of groups like Islamic State and Al-Nusra Front grew. The UN Security Council put both groups on its list of terrorist organisation in May 2013.

Meanwhile, more and more Muslims from all over the world joined them. The first arrivals from Bosnia and Herzegovina were registered in 2012.

According to Bosnia’s State Investigation and Protection Agency, about 200 people from Bosnia have spent time on the Syrian battlefields and the biggest mass departures happened in 2013, when Delic also left.

“I did not want to go as a soldier as I was not capable of this; I was already 90 per cent disabled,” he explained.

Before he left for Syria, Delic delivered a khutbah – a sermon – about the situation in Syria and about jihad, which he published on YouTube in June 2013.

“Jihad is here till judgment day. Go people, you will miss the train, especially the brothers in Bosnia who missed a lot of trains,” he said.

“Go brothers, fight … I do not know, brothers, have you seen jihad and the beauty of jihad and have you learnt to smell gunpowder… and smoking weapons? That is a good smell, brothers. It stinks to some; to me it’s good,” he added.

Departure for the Middle East

At the end of July 2013, Delic left for Syria with two friends, while his wife and children stayed at home.

They flew first from Sarajevo to Istanbul. He says they all knew where they were going but adds that, at the time, going to Syria was not forbidden in Bosnia.

They soon reached the Turkish-Syrian border where they encountered numerous refugees from Syria. The sight of one refugee boy struck them.

“He did not have anything to wear. I took him, and this was my best move or gesture or action, I took him to some shop and put clothes on him. I saw such joy in his eyes,” he recalled.

On crossing the border, Delic came to one of the refugee camps from where he continued to a small barracks.

“You just report to the barracks, or in the street, or you go to someone’s private home. I reported to the barracks and some Bosnians were already there,” he explained.

He said a group of Bosnians and Arabs then approached him and they went together to the main centre of the unit in the city of Haritan.

But Delic says he did not like the look of the unit.

“There was a mix of people in that unit, Chechens and others… I didn’t want to sign up to that unit and my fellow locals from Maglaj did not want to, either,” Delic said.

He insists he did not have anything to do with the unit but just ate and slept there. He says he spent his time visiting cities, and 10 to 15 days upon his arrival, held a khutbah for Eid.

“Allah loves those who fight as solid bastions… There’ll be no disunity on this journey, brothers. It is worse when someone separates on this journey than when they separate in peaceful times,” he said in his sermon.

“When someone calls on you to help in faith, you are obliged to come. Those who did not come don’t know the state of things in Syria,” he added.

He told BIRN that he tried to organise the fighters from Bosnia into one unit. He believes that between 70 and 90 Bosnians were in Syria during that time, mostly younger men.

“I wanted to unite the Bosnians there in one unit, so that they could watch out for each other,” Delic clarified.

In mid-August 2013, Delic went to the city of Azaz where he says he stayed until his return to Bosnia. He says that he gave religious lectures to the soldiers there.

He came home in early September, however, after observing what he said was a “disorganized jihad” in Syria, as well as “discord among the Muslims”.

“No one listens to anyone and everyone has some opinion of their own,” he said.

“I particularly did not like this, because we learned differently in Bosnia,” he added. He did not succeed in uniting the Bosnian fighters into one unit.

Gun found at home

In the summer of 2014, Bosnia changed the law to make fighting in foreign wars a criminal act.

Delic was arrested and charged in September 2014 during an operation codenamed Damask (Damascus) together with a number of other members of the Salafi community.

During the arrest, SIPA investigators found an unlicensed rifle in his house and ten bombs.

He says the bombs were in the house when he moved in and that he did not what to do with them so he just left them. He says he had the rifle because bears and wolves in the woods preyed on local sheep.

Delic was released pending his trial, which is still ongoing.

He said he expects to be acquitted, based on his claim that he did not actually join any group that was declared a terrorist unit, and on the fact that Bosnia only made taking part in conflicts overseas a crime after he returned from Syria.

“It is not true that I pose any threat to the state, to peace, or to society,” he insisted.