Following yesterday’s arrest of 15 persons on terrorism charges, of which 12 are Kosovo imams and one political party leader, Enver Robelli writes how one of the arrested imams, Shefqet Krasniqi, had a valid identification card issued by Serbian authorities in 2004. It is probably with this ID that Krasniqi was allowed to travel to Preshevo valley “to brainwash believers there”. Robelli says that Krasniqi, along with many other imams, have incited hatred, lied and manipulated for fifteen years. In this time, majority of political parties have kept silent and even flirted with religious fanatics by promising to allow wearing of headscarves in state institutions. This flirting led to Hashim Thaci’s Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) enabling a woman in headscarf, who justifies terrorist acts of Albanians in Syria and Iraq, to get elected at the Kosovo Assembly. “Religious fascists” should have been vigorously fought with all legal and democratic means and the fact that the arrests of several religious extremists occurred only a day ahead of the Kosovo Assembly constitutive session shows that PDK has orchestrated this to appear as a serious partner to international community in the fight against Islamic terrorism, says Robelli. “Those who are corrupt and who have built political careers through crime cannot fight any extremism, because there is little difference between the extremism of Shefqet Krasniqi and the anti-democratic extremism of Hashim Thaci, Kadri Veseli, Adem Grabovci, Latif Gashi and their likes. Religious fraudsters steal in the name of God and Koran, political fraudsters steal, loot and destroy the society in the name of ‘war values’”, writes Robelli.

 *licna karta – Serbian for Identification Card