Minority Muslims Call for Protection
BELGRADE, April 17 (Reuters) — The leader of minority Muslims in Belgrade called on Wednesday for special protection of his community after the only mosque in the Serbian capital was damaged in a bombing attack. As Mufti Hamdija Jusufspahic spoke, Serbian police began to guard the 17th-century Bayrakli Mosque in the centre of town. The blast at midnight on Monday tore a crater in the base of the Bayrakli Mosque's minaret, showered the carpeted interior with shattered window glass and masonry and blew out windows of cars and apartments across the street.Jusufspahic, mufti of 300,000 minority Muslims in central Serbia, called a news conference inside the stone mosque to call for more official protection and say his people sought only to live in peace alongside Serbs. He said it was the seventh bomb attack on the mosque since 1990, when federal Yugoslavia started falling apart in ethnic conflict which led to Bosnia's Serb-Muslim war, but the second since March 30, after a peace treaty ended the fighting. "We thank God that during this war, in which over 1,000 mosques were destroyed in Bosnia (by radical Serb fighters), not one was destroyed in Serbia itself," he said.
"But now that peace is back, these last attacks on Bayrakli Mosque show the potential of such crimes (spreading). Many mosques were destroyed in Bosnia and the perpetrators would like to do the same here and threaten peace in Belgrade."
Jusufspahic said his community was confident the great majority of Serbians in rump federal Yugoslavia favoured peaceful co-existence with minority Muslims. But he said Yugoslav authorities needed to do more to protect the defenceless Muslim community and called for around the clock police guards at mosques. "We demand protection of this mosque and also of those in Mali Zvornik and Nis," he said, mentioning two other Serbian towns. "We will seek protection of our Islamic monuments and our religious and cultural heritage."
Outside, a few Serbian plainclothes policemen stood watch in the quiet, narrow street. They refused comment to reporters. Three times as many Muslims as usual had come to prayers at the mosque the day after the bombing in an indication that their community would not be intimidated, he said. The mufti was dissatisfied at the apparent failure of Yugoslav authorities to arrest and prosecute anyone in connection with attacks on the mosque since 1992. But Jusufspahic credited Belgrade Mayor Nebosja Covic for visiting the mosque swiftly after the bomb blast and pledging assistance. The mufti planned to meet Serbia's religious affairs minister to discuss further measures of support.
The attack was condemned by moderate Serbian opposition parties, Serbia's Helsinki human rights committee and the Belgrade city government. Serbia's Muslims have been spared serious discrimination in recent years by living quietly and not getting involved in Bosnia's war, which erupted after Bosnian Muslims and Croats voted to secede from Serbian-led Yugoslavia.
Jusufspahic said there were 2.5 million Muslims among the 11 million population of rump Yugoslavia. The great majority of these Muslims are ethnic Albanians in Serbia's southern Kosovo province and Slavs in the Sandzak pocket bordering Bosnia.
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