Serbia: Court Rules Seven Guilty Of Helping Jihadists

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By Maja Zivanovic

The Special Court in Belgrade on Wednesday found seven people guilty of terrorism and cooperation with jihadi groups in Syria and Iraq.

The Higher Court found seven people guilty of terrorism. It jailed Abid Podbicanin, Sead Plojovic and Tefik Mujovic for 11 years, Goran Pavlovic for ten, Iznudin Crnovrcanin and Rejhan Plojovic for nine and a half years, while Ferat Kasumovic got seven and a half years.

Podbicanin, Pavlovic and Plovic are believed to be still on the run and were tried in absentia.

Serbia’s Tanjug news agency said they were all found guilty of terrorist acts, recruitment and training for terrorist acts, terrorist financing, and public incitement to commit terrorist acts.

It said Pavlovic and Plojovic established links with organizations that the UN has declared terrorist, the “Islamic State of Iraq and Levant” and “Front Al-Nusra”, with the help of Podbicanin and Mujovic.

The court found them guilty of “collecting money from like-minded people in Serbia, the countries of the region and Western Europe, and financing the departure of several Serbian citizens who recruited to participate in armed conflicts, first in camps for terrorist training in Syria, and then on the battlefield,” Tanjug said.

Since this was their first trial, they may appeal against the verdict.

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The Balkan Insight (formerly the Balkin Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN) is a close group of editors and trainers that enables journalists in the region to produce in-depth analytical and investigative journalism on complex political, economic and social themes. BIRN emerged from the Balkan programme of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, IWPR, in 2005. The original IWPR Balkans team was mandated to localise that programme and make it sustainable, in light of changing realities in the region and the maturity of the IWPR intervention. Since then, its work in publishing, media training and public debate activities has become synonymous with quality, reliability and impartiality. A fully-independent and local network, it is now developing as an efficient and self-sustainable regional institution to enhance the capacity for journalism that pushes for public debate on European-oriented political and economic reform.

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