American With Murky Past Sets Off Alarms in Bosnia

Isa Abdullah Ali, born Cleven Holt here 39 years ago, carries two bullets in his body and the scars of 10 other wounds from his days and nights in Lebanon’s civil war in the 1980s.

He walks with a limp, and is not considered much of a physical threat as a mercenary or terrorist. And journalists and diplomats who knew him in Beirut in the early 1980s were never sure whether the tales he told of his life as a gunman for the militant Islamic group Hezbollah were truth or bluster.

But when Holt’s name flashed across government computers during security checks before President Clinton visited U.S. troops in Bosnia-Herzegovina earlier this month, American commanders quickly issued a warning. They were not about to take chances with potential terrorist threats in the powder keg that is the Balkans.

Sources say information in U.S. intelligence files showed that Holt--also known by the name Kevin Holt--was believed to be in Bosnia, working with Islamic fundamentalists who had come to the Balkans to support ethnic Muslims in the bloody Bosnian war. How and when he went to Bosnia--if he is indeed there--is not clear.

“If you are looking at the threat he poses relative to others, we would put him as an individual worth paying attention to, the subject of concern, but not someone who is as great a threat as the [militant] Egyptians or the [Iranian] Revolutionary Guards,” said a U.S. intelligence official.

Earlier this week, fliers warning about Holt were handed out to guards and U.S. security personnel and others at bases in Bosnia, even though U.S. officials say they still are not certain he is actually there; and they say Holt has not attempted to approach an American base in Bosnia, as has been reported.

But the Holt case points up the degree of U.S. commanders’ concern about threats to the security of American personnel in the Balkans, especially from any Islamic fundamentalists who may have refused to abide by the provision of the peace accord forged in Dayton, Ohio, that called for foreign fighters to be out of Bosnia by last Friday.

In fact, U.S. officials stress that while Holt has received publicity because he is the only American thought to be part of the Islamic contingent that fought for the Bosnian government in the war, he is not considered the biggest threat to U.S. forces. Terrorists from Egypt loyal to Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who was sentenced to life in prison in New York last week, and from the extremist Iranian Revolutionary Guard are considered more dangerous if any of them have remained in Bosnia.

Warning fliers were issued about Holt, officials say, because American commanders were concerned that U.S. military guards might not suspect a fellow American of posing any danger. “He may not be the biggest threat, but the way we have treated his case is just a sign that the security of our forces is our highest priority,” said a senior U.S. official.

Those who know Holt’s background find it hard to believe that the U.S. government seems so worried about a man who until a year ago was working as a groundskeeper and janitor at Howard University here. Even during his days in Beirut he was something of a legend to other Americans, not because he was known as a master terrorist but because, as an African American fluent in Arabic and soldiering with Islamic militants, he seemed totally out of place. He did, however, appear to have genuine--if murky--ties to the city’s pro-Iranian Hezbollah fighters.

Indeed, Holt’s life has been one in which fact has always mingled with fiction and speculation; bluster and deception seem to have been his constant allies.

“He was very strange. He came across as being slightly deranged,” recalled Terry Anderson, the former Associated Press correspondent who was kidnapped by terrorists in Beirut. “He carried an M-16 with a sniper scope . . . around. And he would show up at the Commodore Hotel bar and try to hang out with reporters. He was a shooter, but there were thousands of shooters in Beirut back then. His only claim to fame was [that] he was a black American shooter.”

Added a State Department official: “This guy has an incredible history.”

Holt was one of eight children in an inner-city family. He dropped out of Washington’s Paul Junior High in the ninth grade and lied about his age to join the U.S. Army.

His subsequent drifting seemed to end when he converted to Islam in the 1970s. By 1981, he had turned up in Beirut. At 6-foot-3 and more than 200 pounds, he was an intimidating presence, a figure hard to miss around the city.

“He didn’t exactly blend in,” recalled Anderson.

“I always got the impression he was a fairly pathetic figure, someone who wanted to be on the inside but who wasn’t,” added another journalist who was familiar with him in Beirut. “The U.S. Embassy always acted as if he was a crackpot. They didn’t seem to take him very seriously back then either.”

But there were signs even then that Holt had serious ties to terrorists. Tod Roberson, then a correspondent for Reuters news service, was briefly kidnapped by Hezbollah forces in 1984 and became convinced that it was because he had been asking questions about Holt. In a 1990 article on Holt in the Washington Post Sunday Magazine, Roberson wrote that Holt eventually told him he was behind the kidnapping.

In 1986, Holt was badly wounded in what appeared to be a planned assassination attempt against him on the streets of Beirut. His mother finally pressured a reluctant State Department to help him return to the United States. He ultimately returned to Washington and took his job at Howard.