"This morning at 5:00 am (0300 GMT) a (police) operation was launched against the extremist Islamist Wahhabi movement in the territory of Novi Pazar, Sjenica and Tutin," Interior Minister Ivica Dacic told the Tanjug news agency.
All three towns are in southwestern Serbia with large Muslim communities.
"Seventeen people were arrested, one of them from Bosnia," Serbian police chief Milorad Veljovic told private B92 television channel.
Police searched some 18 locations and seized a number of computers, CDs, mobile telephones, SMS cards, audio and video tapes as well as books, Veljovic said.
The arrests came after the attack on the US embassy by a Serbian national with ties to the local Wahhabi community, a radical branch of Islam.
According to Veljovic, "police will determine whether there is a need to detain more people."
The suspected radical Islamist, a Serb national from Novi Pazar identified by Bosnian police as Mevlid Jasarevic, was wounded and arrested after opening fire Friday on the US embassy in Sarajevo. A police guard was wounded in the attack.
"All 17 arrested are in some way related to Mevlid Jasarevic," Veljovic said.
Bosnia is home to a small minority of followers of Wahhabism, a strict and ultra-conservative branch of Islam which is dominant in Saudi Arabia. (*)
Editor: Kunto Wibisono
Copyright © ANTARA 2011
