Abu Hamza May Sue Bosnia Over Years in Detention

The Syrian citizen Imad Al-Husin better known as Abu Hamza on Thursday told the TV network Aljazeera Balkans that he may file a lawsuit against the Bosnian authorities for keeping him for more than seven years in detention, on suspicion that he represented a threat to national security.

"I challenge the Bosnian authorities to hold a fair trial," Al-Husin told Aljazeera.

"I'm ready to give them my head if they can prove I am a menace to national security. If I'm guilty, they can condemn me. If not, I will sue them because they held me [in detention] for seven-and-a-half years," he said.

Abu Hamza denied claims made by Bosnia's Ministry of Security on Thursday that he still represented a menace to national security.

"Back in 2014 my legal team asked the Bosnian authorities to produce evidence that I represented a threat," Abu Hamza said. "All they could do was present two newspapers articles dating from 2006 and 2007.

"Apart from that, they didn't provide any evidence to justify the idea that I represent a threat to Bosnian national security," he stated.

Nedim Kulenovic, a lawyer from Vasa Prava [Your Rights], an NGO providing legal aid to Abu Hamza, told BIRN on Friday that his client "will surely file a complaint against Bosnia with the European Court for Human Rights".

Imad Al-Husin came to Bosnia in the 1980s and fought in the 1992-war in Bosnia for the El Mujhaid brigade, later marrying a Bosnian and obtaining citizenship.

He was arrested in 2008, accused of representing a threat to national security, deprived of his citizenship and imprisoned in the immigration centre in Lukavica, where he remained for more than seven years without trial.

He was eventually released on Thursday, as a consequence of a new law...