Far From Flawless

We tried to tell you. I hope that Dan Jarvis, for one, is exactly as proud of this as he ought to be. If necessary, then vote for whoever is in second place behind him, regardless of party. Rory Mulholland writes:

The imam in the Bosnian mountain village spoke in flawless American English.

Any suggestion that his area was an extremist stronghold was false, insisted Edis Bosnic. 

“We are enemies of the state only because we are calling people away from vice, drugs and alcohol and urging them to come back to decent values,” he said. 

The ultra-strict approach to Islam known as Wahhabism or Salafism which Mr Bosnic practises in the village of Gornja Maoca is spreading in Bosnia – and hundreds of parents blame its followers for recruiting their sons to fight in the battlefields of the Middle East for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil). 

Some 250 Bosnians have gone to fight in Syria or Iraq since 2012 – the biggest proportion of the population of any European country except Belgium.

Around 45 have been killed and around 50 have returned home. Sefik Cufurovic is one of the bereft parents.

He said his son, Ibro, received weapons training in Gornja Maoca after disappearing from his home 200 miles away. 

Now the 21-year-old is somewhere in the Middle East, and a wanted poster on Interpol’s website says he faces charges of “organising a terrorist group”. 

Apart from the Interpol picture, the only photo Mr Cufurovic has of his son is a snapshot of a fair-haired child on his mobile phone. 

Ibro went from being a model student to a radical Islamist in a very short time, said Mr Cufurovic. 

Before he left his home, he tore up all the photos that existed of him and told his father he was a bad Muslim. 

“I won’t go to your funeral when you die,” he said. 

The man who Mr Cufurovic blames for this transformation is the previous imam of Gornja Maoca, Husein “Bilal” Bosnic, who was sentenced last November to seven years in jail for promoting jihad and recruiting for Isil. 

Mr Cufurovic appeared as a witness in the trial that revealed the imam, who is no relation to Edis Bosnic, to be a central figure for Bosnian radicals. 

The case was a reminder that this nation of 3.8 million people, which has applied to join the European Union, has a growing problem with radicalisation. 

Bosnia was one of several Balkan states which last summer raised their threat levels after Isil released a propaganda video showing Balkan fighters threatening to spread jihad to south-eastern Europe. 

The village of Gornja Maoca is one of a number of Wahhabi communities that Bosnian counter-terrorism forces are keeping a close eye on. Husein Bosnic was arrested there. 

Another notorious figure who lived there is Nusret Imamovic, who the US State Department lists as “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” for his alleged role as a senior figure in Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian affiliate of al-Qaeda. 

Last year, Bosnian special forces police raided the village after photos emerged showing houses displaying the black flag of jihad.  

Edis Bosnic admitted some of his neighbours had left for Syria, but said they were misguided. 

“Some are behaving like Assad,” he added, referring to Syria’s bloodsoaked dictator. 

The imam said he condemned the terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels “as much as I condemn French air strikes in Syria”.  

Mr Bosnic also said Isil had “deviated from the path” of true Islam, and denied there was a terrorist training camp in or near his village.

Dragan Mektic, the Bosnian security minister, told the Telegraph there were no training camps in the country, but there is evidence that camps intended to prepare Bosnians for jihad did – or still do – exist. 

During the civil war between 1992 and 1995, hundreds of foreign fighters, mostly Arabs, arrived in Bosnia to fight alongside their Muslim co-religionists against the Serbs. 

Today, the authorities say there are about 3,000 Salafist fundamentalists in Bosnia, a fraction of the country’s 1.6 million Muslims. 

But the government adds that the number of Salafists is increasing. 

Osve, another village inhabited by Wahhabis, lies 50 miles west of Gornja Maoca.  

Izet Hadzic, its imam, also flatly rejected any links to extremism and said he had received death threats for speaking out against Isil. 

He is the former frontman of a heavy metal band called Black Lady who gave up alcohol and music to devote himself to Islam – although he rejects the terms Salafist or Wahhabi.

“There is no terror training camp here,” he said, as his wife, clad in black with a veil revealing only her eyes, hung out the washing in the garden. 

Mr Hadzic said the two families from Osve who had gone to Syria were trouble-makers and not part of the community. 

The village still has some Serb residents, who had only warm words for their Muslim neighbours. 

Another area where Wahhabis set up is in the far north, next to the Croatian border. “It’s no surprise that they moved here,” said a retired policemen in the area. 

“Houses and land are cheap - €50 for a hectare - and it's easy to smuggle weapons, people or drugs across the border.” 

In Velika Kladusa, the region’s main town, many locals have tales of their sons being radicalised or stopped at Sarajevo airport as they attempted to travel to Syria. 

Sefik Cufurovic bitterly regrets he was unable to stop his own son travelling there. He is now worried about another of his offspring.

“I’m afraid Serif (his stepson) is being radicalised. He's started attending prayers with the Wahhabis,” he said.