The Global Terrorism Index 2020 said that there were two terrorist acts in Bosnia in 2019 and six in 2018, but professor Vlado Azinovic, an expert of terrorism, told N1 that he does not know of those attacks and that the report is based on “completely fabricated data.”

The Global Terrorism Index is published every year by the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP), an independent, non-partisan, non-profit think tank “dedicated to shifting the world’s focus to peace as a positive, achievable, and tangible measure of human well-being and progress.”

This year’s Index said that Bosnia has recorded the largest improvement in Europe regarding the impact of terrorism, which is “very low” in the country.  

“Overall, since 2002, the impact of terrorism in Bosnia and Herzegovina has improved. Out of 24 attacks recorded since 2002 none were attributed to known terrorist groups. The majority of attacks were attributed to unknown perpetrators, five to Muslim extremists and one to the Wahhabi Movement. Seven fatalities were recorded between 2002 and 2019, with none recorded in 2019,” the Index said.

“As someone who lives here, I don’t know of those two, nor of those six (terrorist attacks),” said professor Vlado Azinovic.

He argued that it is unclear “who counts terrorist attacks, who classifies them as terrorist acts, who submitted such data and who, apart from the judiciary and security agencies in Bosnia and Herzegovina, is competent to call something a terrorist act.”  

The conclusions on terrorism in Bosnia in the report is based on “completely fabricated data,” he said, adding that this puts the entire report into question.  

Azinovic stated that Bosnia currently does not have a problem with terrorism.  

The Interior Minister of Bosnia’s semi-autonomous Republika Srpska (RS) entity, Dragan Lukac, did not comment on the Index but said recently that the danger of terrorism is always present.  

Police forces in Bosnia, the region and Europe must continue to exchange information to keep people who may be potential perpetrators of terrorist acts under control, he said.  

Lukac argued that there are still Muslim extremist communities in Bosnia where people were recruited to fight in foreign battlefields and that they must be put under control.

According to Azinovic, it is difficult to detect only one source of danger when it comes to terrorism and more and more often, terrorist acts are being committed by individuals without a criminal record with authorities having no knowledge of their intentions.  

The problem in Bosnia and abroad is the “relatively small prison sentences” that people who the court established were members of ISIS have received, he said.