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Osama bin Laden visited Croatia, Report
Vecernji.hr
Osama bin Laden stayed in Croatia for days in the 1980s says Croatian daily newspaper Vecernji.hr.
The then 29-year old Osama was part of a 3-men delegation that came to Zagreb
, Croatia , seeking to purchase weapons for the Afghan fighters.
Vecernji.hr cites a document by the Yugoslav Federal Department of Commerce from 1986 that was a classified document marked as a “military secret”.
The document’s Notes section describes that Osama bin Laden arrived in Croatia on October 25, 1986 along with Fathi Muhammed Ali, Afghan mujahedeen representative, Osman Kaldirim, an ethnic Turk from the US . The men were
accompanied by Yugoslav-born Zorica Ridjesic and Milica Karadzoglu. Karadzoglu was married to a Turkish national. Aleksandar Markovic, representative of the Yugoslav export company Genex, was also part of the crowd.
Yugoslav military Colonel Stankovic ordered that the men be first debriefed. Lieutenant Colonel’s Jovanovic and Jurisic interrogated the three visitors.
Vecernji.hr says that Osama and the men said that they had $100
million to spend and that besides conventional weapons they also wanted to buy poison.
The report says that Osama had talks with bankers at the Zagreb-office of Beobanka. It is unclear how much money he deposited there
but the report says that the negotiations after the deposit quickened up.
Vecernji.hr says that Osama then flew to Belgrade where he asked the Yugoslav communist politicians for help in the fight against the Russians;
that Osama visited the weapons factory in Capljina and wanted to buy poison that was produced in the Potoci factory near Mostar.
After reviewing his requests, the communists decided not to sell him the poison because
Yugoslavia had a policy that poison is sold only to governments.
Vecernji reminds that in 1992 bin Laden created a “humanitarian” organization in Croatia , Al-Kifah, located in the street Krizni Put 105 and that the
organization was ran by the Algerian national Kamr Ad Din Khirbani who lived in Vila Velebit 5, Zagreb .
Khirbani then moved to Bosnia , then Albania and became the chief suspect in the attack on the US assets in Rome .
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