AP, November 17, 2007
Report: 7 ex-mujahedeen seeking asylum in Switzerland face possible expulsion to Bosnia
GENEVA: Seven former mujahedeen seeking asylum in Switzerland might be sent back to Bosnia with their families, a Swiss daily said Saturday.
Swiss authorities have requested Bosnia to accept the men, who had traveled from Tunisia and Morocco to Bosnia in the 1990s to join in fighting the Serbs, according to Swiss daily Tages Anzeiger.
Federal Office of Migration spokeswoman Brigitte Hauser told The Associated Press that there is a pending procedure in the case, but declined to comment further. It was not immediately clear when they arrived or why they were seeking asylum.
The Swiss media report cited Bosnian daily Nezavisne novine, which in its Friday edition quoted an official from the country's security ministry as saying his office was reviewing the Swiss demand.
"Switzerland has sent us a request for Bosnia to accept several persons of afro-Asian origin who currently are in Switzerland," Dragan Mektic was quoted as saying.
"We are now checking the citizenship of those persons as well as their stays here. We have not replied yet to the Swiss."
The report said the seven men were mujahedeen, or holy warriors, who were fighting on the Muslim side in the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
Calls to Sarajevo's security ministry went unanswered Saturday, according to the report.
Mektic said the men are married to Bosnian women and have five to six children each.
"Who those people are, why they stayed in Bosnia and what they did here, as well as other details about them, we will know next week," he told the daily.
|
