Husein "Bilal" Bosnic, the Islamic preacher accused of recruiting young Bosnians to fight for the Islamic State (IS), was sentenced Thursday to seven years in prison.

Bosnic, 43, has been on trial since December 2014 for promoting jihad, recruiting followers to IS, and organizing their trips to Syrian and Iraqi battlefields. Judge Amela Huskic said those three charges were proven during the trial, despite Bosnic's strong denials.

The court found that at least six young men died as a result of Bosnic's influence: Emrah Filipovic, Samir Begic, Amir Crnjekovic, Ismar Mesinovic, Azmir Alisic, and Muaz Sabic.

The announcement of the verdict was a high-profile, high-security event. Bosnic, a former musician with four wives and 18 children, is the informal leader of the Islamic extremist Salafi community in Bosnia. Last month the prosecutor requested the maximum 20-year jail sentence, whereas the defense had called for full acquittal.

The courtroom was crowded for the sentencing of the slight, bearded man, with a clutch of state police and security officers on hand, most wearing ski-masks.

The Kid

A few months earlier, the court heard the testimony of a young man who was arrested at Sarajevo airport as he tried to travel to Turkey, and then on to Syria.

His name was Merim Keserovic. 

Prosecutor Dubravko Campara asked the 18-year-old witness if Bosnic ever advocated fighting for IS during his sermons, which Keserovic had attended before his attempted trip.

"I don't remember," Keserovic said in an unsteady voice, his eyes flitting between Bosnic, the judge and the prosecution.

Campara then produced the statement Keserovic gave to police when he was arrested.

Signed by Keserovic, it says Bosnic spoke about the need for believers to join the "brothers" fighting for IS in Syria.

Keserovic claimed police had written his statement for him, giving it to him to sign afterward; but he also confirmed its contents, adding that he'd been given instructions on who to meet once he arrived in Syria.

In a separate trial, Keserovic was sentenced to a year in prison.

Keserovic is a high school dropout from the village of Trnovi who comes from a poor family. His father died of cancer, leaving him, his mother and his two brothers to fend for themselves. Everyone in the family is unemployed.

He said he was only following the lead of his older brother, Alija, with whom he often attended Bosnic's sermons. Alija departed for Syria earlier, after spending time with Bosnic minding his goats.

Where the elder brother is now, and what he is doing, remains unknown.

Why Bosnia?

The story of the brothers Keserovic is one example among many in the mountainous villages of Bosnia and Herzegovina - an economic black hole of widespread unemployment, rampant corruption, and the echoes of the early 1990s conflict that has never seen resolution.

The power-sharing political system installed by the peace agreement that ended the Bosnian war has nurtured a festering sense of injustice among Bosnia's three main ethno-religious groups, the Orthodox Serbs, the Catholic Croats and the Muslim Bosniaks.

The three groups share a strong sense of nationalism. For a small minority of Bosniaks, nationalism led them to join the Salafist sect - Muslims who follow an extreme version of Islam, distinguishable in the streets of Bosnia by their long beards, loose clothing and cotton pants cut above the ankle; Salafist women are generally completely enveloped in black.

Bosnian Salafists predate the rise of IS. The first surfaced in Bosnia during the war between 1992 and 1995, when Bosnia was subject to an arms embargo and struggled to protect itself from Serb attacks. A number of fighters from the Middle East came to Bosnia to fight alongside their Muslim brethren; with them, they brought Salafism.

In the aftermath of the war, the Salafists' influence spread, although their interpretation of Islam never sat well with the country's official Islamic community, which has taken issue with the group since the war. Most Bosnian Muslims reject the Salafists' restrictive, fundamentalist views.

The hub of Bosnia's Salafi community appears to be located in Austria. In 2007, the former head of the Bosnian Islamic community, Mustafa Ceric, claimed that the masterminds behind Bosnian Salafism were Bosnians living in Vienna.

After several incidents involving Salafists - including the 2010 bombing of a police station in the central town of Bugojno, and a 2011 armed attack on the US Embassy in the capital Sarajevo - Bosnian authorities began to respond more forcefully. Scrutiny of the group intensified after the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, as the international community began to focus on the activities of IS.

As a result, many Bosnian Salafists began to retreat to remote villages where they could live by their own rules.

One of those remote locations is the place where Bosnic was first arrested: the north-eastern village of Gornja Maoca. 

The village, closed to media, has in the past couple of years developed a reputation as a stronghold of the Salafists. Some of the most prominent figures involved in extremist incidents have spent time there.

A New Leader

Several years ago, the informal leader in Gornja Maoca was Nusret Imamovic – now believed by the US State Department to be fighting in Syria. When Imamovic left, he left a void. For a short time, the Salafists lacked a unified voice.

Bosnic gained prominence with speeches and media appearances, becoming the Salafist community's new leader. His September 2014 arrest, along with 15 others, was part of the high-profile police operation Damascus. 

The Vulnerable

Bosnic preached near his home in north-western Buzim, and also travelled to give sermons. But he was rarely allowed to speak in front of a wider Dzemat (the Islamic community of one particular mosque, usually drawn from the neighborhood in which the mosque is located).

According to the Dzemat of the King Fahd mosque in Sarajevo, Bosnic tried to deliver a sermon there but was turned away.

Nezim Muderis Halilovic, who occasionally preaches at King Fahd, said: “He does not fit into our concept here.”

But in smaller communities, like the north-western town of Velika Kladusa, Bosnic was the religious authority, giving sermons after Friday prayers. According to witnesses, people traveled many miles to hear him speak.

For many he was also a father figure, and Alija Keserovic joined other young men who worked on Bosnic's land before leaving for Syria.

Witness Sefik Cufurovic said his son Ibro, in his early 20s, was a good student before he went in 2013 to live with Bosnic in Buzim, to tend his sheep.

Ibro left for Syria shortly after. His whereabouts are not known.

Another witness, Rifet Sabic, said his son Suad was killed fighting for IS early this year after growing close to Bosnic.

"Any family whose house was ever visited by Bilal Bosnic is destroyed," Sabic told the court.

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