Drecun: There is strong network of radical Islam in Kosovo

BELGRADE - Milovan Drecun, chair of the Serbian parliament's committee on Kosovo-Metohija (KiM), said on Tuesday that Kosovo's Interior Minister Bajram Redzepi is trying to ease the gravity of graffiti on the Serbian Orthodox monastery of Visoki Decani that call for the Islamic State and the establishment of the Caliphate.

Redzepi qualified it as an act of vandalism, claiming that the graffiti on the walls of the monastery had been written by three minors.

In a broadcast on Radio-Television of Kosovo 2, Redzepi said that police would talk with the parents of the minors so as to ensure that such nonsense does not happen again.

"Redzepi wants to diminish the gravity of this event, which is actually very serious," Drecun told reporters in the Serbian parliament.

"In the last 20 years, these areas have become an Islamic Jihad stronghold which has the full potential for recruiting jihadists, which we have seen in the case of Syria and Iraq," Drecun said.

"Although the network has become regional, there is still no proper response, there is no strong, joint regional action and the action of the entire international community against that," he warned.

That network is particularly strong in Kosovo-Metohija, where radical Islam is preached in several hundred mosques, the jihadist ideology that emphasizes that Christians are a natural enemy to Muslims," Drecun said.

"Many children in Kosovo-Metohija grow up with that radical ideology and become an easy prey for jihadists," he added.

"Writing graffiti on the property of the Monastery of Decani is not innocuous at all, and reveals the presence of a network of radical Islam which is especially strong in the areas of Decani and Pec. That is...