Mevlid Jasarevic, who shot at the US Embassy in Sarajevo on Friday from an AK-47 automatic rifle, is an Islamist extremist who follows the radical Takfir ideology that advocates non-tolerance towards non-Muslims and disrespect for secular laws, and this 23-year-old man, born in Serbia, was probably recruited by radical Islamists during his stay in Austria, the Bosnian media reported on Sunday.
The attacker's grandfather, Sain Jasarevic, who lives in Novi Pazar, Serbia, was quoted by the media as saying that Mevlid's parents had divorced many years ago and that his mother took Mevlid as a baby to Austria.
According to the grandfather, who was taken in for the police investigation in Saturday in Serbia, the mother married a few times later and her last husband was "some Arab".
The grandfather said that after some time his grandson Mevlid returned from Austria, wearing a beard and promoting some "weird ideas" how Islam should be practiced.
After that Mevlid lived in Gornja Maoca, a northeastern Bosnian village known for being inhabited by radical Wahhabis. He also took his wife and son to Gornja Maoca, according to the grandfather.
The Bosnian police possess information that before the terrorist incident in Sarajevo, Jasarevic had stayed in Gornja Maoca and security agents raided that village on Saturday combing it house by house.
The attacker reportedly prepared a video message before the attack. Although the police did not reveal the content of the message, the Sarajevo-based Dnevni Avaz claims that Jasarevic had stated that the intention of his attack on the US embassy in the Bosnian capital was "to help the Muslim brethren".
The Bosnian Islamic community's dignitary, Enes Ljevakovic, in charge of issuing fatwas, has said that Takfir proponents such is Jasarevic grossly abuse Islam.
"We most strongly condemn the ideology promoted by Takfir such as anathematizing, noncooperation among people, exclusion of coexistence," the dignitary said, speaking on behalf of the Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
He labelled those radicals as a sort of Islamist anarchists.
Another follower of the Takfir ideology, Muamer Topalovic, killed a Bosnian Croat Catholic family near Konjic at Christmas in 2002 and has been in the meantime sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Members of a terrorist group that planted an explosive device outside a police station in Bugojno in June 2010 when a police officer was killed, also promoted this ideology.
The local media speculate that the centre for recruiting Wahhabis operating in Bosnia is actually in Vienna, and that several Wahhabi groups are working on the destabilisation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The editorial of the Sarajevo-based Oslobodjenje on Sunday criticised security forces for failing to prevent the latest terrorist incident although they have registered Jasarevic as a potential terrorist threat.
The daily reads that the previous bomb attack in Bugojno was not treated by the security agencies as a warning about "lone attackers" posing a serious threat.
The daily also criticises the Islamic Community's leadership for being engaged more in politics than in the interpretation of Islam and efforts to thwart extremists.
