21. 04. 2007

REPORTER ASSAULTED AT WAHHABI LEADER FUNERAL

NOVI PAZAR, BELGRADE, 21 April 2007 (B92) - Ismail Prentić, the Wahhabi group leader killed in Friday’s clash with police, was buried on Saturday.

Reporters were not welcome during the funeral ceremony, demonstrated in an attack on daily Glas Javnosti reporter Zoran Šaponjić when he tried to take a picture of the procession.

“Šaponjić was standing behind a parked vehicle trying to take pictures of the funeral procession from a 40-meter distance. A sturdy man attacked him from behind, and several more people left the procession to surround Šaponjić,” Glas javnosti daily said in a statement.

“The assailants forcibly took the camera from the reporter and crashed it against the ground all the while holding him by his hands, neck and body. However, several persons from the procession came to Šaponjić’s rescue and help him get away. As he was fleeing the scene, people in the column insulted and threatened him,” the statement explained.

It also said that Šaponjić notified police of the attack and was immediately offered protection.
 
The funeral procession was made up of several hundred people, including twenty-odd Muslims dressed in clothes typical of the Wahhabis.

Unlike customary Muslim funeral services practiced in this part of the Sandžak area, Prentić’s body was wrapped in a black burial shroud, instead of the traditional green.

One day after the clash Friday between police and a Wahhabi group the situation in Sandžak is calm. Nonetheless, political parties and municipal bodies have increased activity and held an urgent Municipal Defense Council session Saturday.

In yesterday’s clash between police and a Wahhabi militant group, one person was killed, and two wounded, inlcuding a police officer who sustained light injuries.

The MUP issued a statement describing the group as terrorists, and, as Interior Minister Dragan Jočić said, “police would suppress and eliminate all terrorist threats.”

“Strong Islamic community needed in Serbia”

Sead Šaćirović, member of the Serbian Islamic Community Mesihat, told B92 "it was regrettable that the police action ended in death and bloodshed."

He said that “only a strong Islamic community in Serbia could lead to state’s stability.”

“Otherwise, if attacks on the Islamic community continue, as has been the case over the last several years, certain individual interpretations of Islam might appear and provoke deviant behavior in the name of Islam,” he said.