Islamic extremists have been crossing the Balkans for years

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Thousands of Islamic fighters, or mujahedeen, came to Bosnia to fight on the Muslim side during the country's 1992-95 war. But militants, including some with suspected ties to al-Qaida, were active in the region even before it dissolved into ethnic conflict, according to an analysis compiled jointly by U.S. and Croatian intelligence and obtained by The Associated Press.

They included Kamr Ad Din Khirbani, a member of Algeria's Armed Islamic Group, or GIA, who moved to Zagreb, Croatia, in 1991 to set up a humanitarian-aid organization at the direct request of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, the report says.

It says Khirbani used the organization, Al-Kifah, "to infiltrate GIA members into Bosnia," and contends that Iran and unidentified Arab countries bankrolled the operation through cash transfers. The GIA was behind a series of bombings that targeted the Paris subway system in 1995, killing eight people and wounding hundreds.

The Algerian connection is well known to Bosnian authorities: Bensayah Belkacem, one of six Algerian-born Bosnians detained by the U.S. military in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, allegedly made several telephone calls to Abu Zubaydah, believed to be al-Qaida operations chief in Afghanistan and an aide to bin Laden.