Foreign fighters in the Bosnian War
Although the Bosnian President Alija Izetbegović regarded them as symbolically valuable as a sign of the Muslim world's support for Bosnia, they appear to have made little military difference and became a major political liability.From that point on, these fighters operated independently, with little to no coordination with the ARBiH, until the winter of 1993-94[9] Initially, the foreign mujahideen gave food and other basic necessities to the local Muslim population, who were deprived of such by the Serb forces.[11][12] Those who accepted to join imitated the foreigners in both dress and behavior, to such an extent that it was sometimes, according to the ICTY documentation in subsequent war crimes trials, "difficult to distinguish between the two groups".[16] Following the end of the Bosnian War, in a 2005 interview with U.S. journalist Jim Lehrer, Holbrooke stated that "There were over 1,000 people in the country who belonged to what we then called Mujahideen freedom fighters.250 more were under investigation, while the body which is charged to reconsider the citizenship status of the foreign volunteers in the Bosnian War, including Christian fighters from Russia and Western Europe, states that 1,500 cases will eventually be examined.[24][15][25] In the judgment, the judges concluded that the Mujahideen were responsible for execution of 4 Croatian civilians in the village of Miletići in April 1993, inhumanely treating POWs and killing one at the Orašac camp in October 1993, damaged and vandalized the Guča Gora Monastery in June 1993 and also the Church of St. John the Baptist in Travnik.[26][27][28] During the trial of Rasim Delić, the judges concluded that the prosecution had proven that more than 50 Serbs captured during the Battle for Vozuća had been killed in the Kamenica camp by the Mujahideen.[29] Though the judges agreed Delić had effective control over the El Mujahideen unit, he was acquitted from its responsibility since ICTY concluded that he didn't possess enough information to stop them.He was also acquitted from the charge of not saving 24 Croat POWs from being executed and injured by the Mujahideen since the prosecution couldn't prove he had already assumed the position of Chief of Staff of the ARBiH to which he was appointed to the same day.The judges concluded that the prosecution had proven that the Mujahideen from July to August 1995 had treated 12 Serbian POWs detained first in the village of Livada and then the Kamenica camp, inhumanely and had killed three of them.[30] According to the indictment of Rasim Delić, Commander of Main Staff of the Bosnian army (ARBiH) at the time, after the formation of the 7th Muslim Brigade on 19 November 1992, the prosecution tried to prove that battalion was subordinated within its structure.Accordingly, the Prosecution failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the foreign mujahedin officially joined the ARBiH and that they were de iure subordinated to the accused Hadžihasanović and Kubura.[37] With the rise of ISIL during 2014, the contemporary examples with high-profile public and political individuals and civil servants involved in perpetuating unsubstantiated claims are noteworthy, such as Austrian Foreign Minister (now chancellor) Sebastian Kurz, Czech President Milos Zeman, or Croatia's President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović who stated in 2017 that "Bosnia and Herzegovina is hub of Islamic terrorism with more than 10,000 armed Islamists".Albanian, Dutch, Spanish, Irish, Polish, French, Swedish, Hungarian, Danish and Norwegian, Canadian and Finnish volunteers were organized into the Croatian 103rd (International) Infantry Brigade.