Eutrusca
10-10-2005, 17:12
COMMENTARY: A terror network in Belgium ( yes, Belgium! ) lends credence to the "Caliphatists" theory of worldwide Islam's warlike approach to other countries, IMHO. Your thoughts?
Belgium Is Trying to Unravel
the Threads of a Terror Web (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/10/international/europe/10belgium.html?pagewanted=2&th&emc=th)
By ELAINE SCIOLINO and HÉLÈNE FOUQUET
Published: October 10, 2005
BRUSSELS - On a damp, gray day in March 2004, the Dutch traffic police stopped a Belgian driver for a broken headlight and accidentally stumbled onto a major investigation of Islamic radicals.
Diana Scheilen/Hollandse Hoogte, for The New York Times
Jan Creemers, mayor of Maaseik, Belgium. The town is home to 4 of 18 suspects charged with aiding terrorists linked to the 2004 Madrid bombings.
The driver was Khalid Bouloudo, a sometime baker and former Ford autoworker born in Belgium. During a routine check, his name turned up on an Interpol watch list, for an international arrest warrant from Morocco charging him with links to a terrorist organization based in Morocco and involvement in suicide bombings in Casablanca in 2003.
The random arrest set in motion a cascade of events that underscored the extent of the radicalization of young Muslims throughout Europe - and a rapidly expanding and homegrown terrorist threat.
The case suggests a loose arrangement of terrorist sympathizers around Europe who officials say have provided support to terrorist operations in a number of countries. This has presented even small countries like Belgium with difficult law enforcement problems, forcing them to employ new investigative methods and pass tougher laws.
For more than a year, Belgian counterterrorism police officers had been gathering information about Mr. Bouloudo and his contacts in an investigation code-named Operation Asparagus, after the plump white asparagus grown in the eastern border area where they lived. His arrest abruptly cut short the operation.
Fearing that Mr. Bouloudo's contacts would go underground or flee, counterterrorism forces immediately carried out a series of raids throughout the country, dismantling over the next few months what they believed was a sophisticated network that supported the bombings in Casablanca and in Madrid in 2004 and that is also suspected of trying to recruit fighters for the insurgency in Iraq.
In November, the case of the Asparagus 18, as the suspects might be called, finally goes to trial in Brussels. For the first time, Belgian prosecutors will be using an antiterrorism law that came into effect at the end of 2003 and that specifically criminalizes a terrorist act and association with terrorists and imposes a prison sentence of up to 20 years.
None of the 18 men indicted - most of them born in Morocco or of Moroccan descent and from 24 to 42 years old - have been charged with committing or even plotting a specific terrorist act in Belgium.
Instead, the trial will highlight how over the past decade Belgium has become a support center for terrorists in Europe, offering safe haven, false documents and financing. Prosecutors hope to prove that the suspects provided material support to a terrorist group, including lodging and false papers for the bombers who killed 190 in Madrid last year.
Among the other charges are the fabrication and the use of false documents, illegal entry and residence in Belgium, possession of illegal weapons and criminal association with a terrorist enterprise, in this case the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, or G.I.C.M., a loose-knit organization founded by Moroccans, many of whom were trained in Afghanistan before the Taliban were overthrown. Mr. Bouloudo is also believed to have trained there.
"The case is a prototype of the new post-Afghanistan network - a little bit of everything: native-born radicals, immigrants from Morocco, travel to places like Saudi Arabia, connection to operations like Madrid," said Glenn Audenaert, the director of Belgium's federal police force. "It's like handling a number of particles of mercury, toxic in themselves and even more toxic when they come together."
Several lawyers for the defendants said their clients were innocent of terrorist activities, although they said they expected them to be convicted of lesser charges.
A Logistical Base
Despite a well-integrated Moroccan immigrant population that has lived and worked in Belgium for more than half a century, the country has become the destination of choice for many French-speaking immigrants who are put off by France's intrusive security and intelligence services and tougher laws.
It was in Belgium, for example, that the two Tunisian killers of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Afghan resistance leader who was assassinated in 2001, received logistical support. Disguised as journalists, they had Belgian passports and had traveled to Afghanistan from Belgium.
Even defense lawyers involved in the Asparagus 18 trial acknowledge the attractiveness of Belgium as a support center for international criminal and even terrorist activity. "Belgium has become a logistical base for these people," said Didier de Quévy, a lawyer who has been involved in terrorist cases in the past and is representing one of the defendants. "They have come here because the penalties have been light."
Indeed, Belgium's terrorism-fighting tools are limited, even though Brussels, as the headquarters of both the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is the closest Europe comes to having a Continental capital.
It has no equivalent of a Central Intelligence Agency and only a few intelligence officers working abroad. Only 50 police officers, detectives and special agents are assigned nationwide to monitor the Muslim population for potential terrorist plots.
Investigators complain that suspects in Belgium can be held for only 24 hours - compared with up to four days in France - under the vague charge of suspicion of association with criminals. And the hurdles to use intrusive investigative methods, like wiretaps, to obtain evidence in terrorist-related cases are more onerous than in many other European countries.
[ This article is two pages long. To read the rest of the article, go here (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/10/international/europe/10belgium.html?pagewanted=2&th&emc=th). ]
Belgium Is Trying to Unravel
the Threads of a Terror Web (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/10/international/europe/10belgium.html?pagewanted=2&th&emc=th)
By ELAINE SCIOLINO and HÉLÈNE FOUQUET
Published: October 10, 2005
BRUSSELS - On a damp, gray day in March 2004, the Dutch traffic police stopped a Belgian driver for a broken headlight and accidentally stumbled onto a major investigation of Islamic radicals.
Diana Scheilen/Hollandse Hoogte, for The New York Times
Jan Creemers, mayor of Maaseik, Belgium. The town is home to 4 of 18 suspects charged with aiding terrorists linked to the 2004 Madrid bombings.
The driver was Khalid Bouloudo, a sometime baker and former Ford autoworker born in Belgium. During a routine check, his name turned up on an Interpol watch list, for an international arrest warrant from Morocco charging him with links to a terrorist organization based in Morocco and involvement in suicide bombings in Casablanca in 2003.
The random arrest set in motion a cascade of events that underscored the extent of the radicalization of young Muslims throughout Europe - and a rapidly expanding and homegrown terrorist threat.
The case suggests a loose arrangement of terrorist sympathizers around Europe who officials say have provided support to terrorist operations in a number of countries. This has presented even small countries like Belgium with difficult law enforcement problems, forcing them to employ new investigative methods and pass tougher laws.
For more than a year, Belgian counterterrorism police officers had been gathering information about Mr. Bouloudo and his contacts in an investigation code-named Operation Asparagus, after the plump white asparagus grown in the eastern border area where they lived. His arrest abruptly cut short the operation.
Fearing that Mr. Bouloudo's contacts would go underground or flee, counterterrorism forces immediately carried out a series of raids throughout the country, dismantling over the next few months what they believed was a sophisticated network that supported the bombings in Casablanca and in Madrid in 2004 and that is also suspected of trying to recruit fighters for the insurgency in Iraq.
In November, the case of the Asparagus 18, as the suspects might be called, finally goes to trial in Brussels. For the first time, Belgian prosecutors will be using an antiterrorism law that came into effect at the end of 2003 and that specifically criminalizes a terrorist act and association with terrorists and imposes a prison sentence of up to 20 years.
None of the 18 men indicted - most of them born in Morocco or of Moroccan descent and from 24 to 42 years old - have been charged with committing or even plotting a specific terrorist act in Belgium.
Instead, the trial will highlight how over the past decade Belgium has become a support center for terrorists in Europe, offering safe haven, false documents and financing. Prosecutors hope to prove that the suspects provided material support to a terrorist group, including lodging and false papers for the bombers who killed 190 in Madrid last year.
Among the other charges are the fabrication and the use of false documents, illegal entry and residence in Belgium, possession of illegal weapons and criminal association with a terrorist enterprise, in this case the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, or G.I.C.M., a loose-knit organization founded by Moroccans, many of whom were trained in Afghanistan before the Taliban were overthrown. Mr. Bouloudo is also believed to have trained there.
"The case is a prototype of the new post-Afghanistan network - a little bit of everything: native-born radicals, immigrants from Morocco, travel to places like Saudi Arabia, connection to operations like Madrid," said Glenn Audenaert, the director of Belgium's federal police force. "It's like handling a number of particles of mercury, toxic in themselves and even more toxic when they come together."
Several lawyers for the defendants said their clients were innocent of terrorist activities, although they said they expected them to be convicted of lesser charges.
A Logistical Base
Despite a well-integrated Moroccan immigrant population that has lived and worked in Belgium for more than half a century, the country has become the destination of choice for many French-speaking immigrants who are put off by France's intrusive security and intelligence services and tougher laws.
It was in Belgium, for example, that the two Tunisian killers of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Afghan resistance leader who was assassinated in 2001, received logistical support. Disguised as journalists, they had Belgian passports and had traveled to Afghanistan from Belgium.
Even defense lawyers involved in the Asparagus 18 trial acknowledge the attractiveness of Belgium as a support center for international criminal and even terrorist activity. "Belgium has become a logistical base for these people," said Didier de Quévy, a lawyer who has been involved in terrorist cases in the past and is representing one of the defendants. "They have come here because the penalties have been light."
Indeed, Belgium's terrorism-fighting tools are limited, even though Brussels, as the headquarters of both the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is the closest Europe comes to having a Continental capital.
It has no equivalent of a Central Intelligence Agency and only a few intelligence officers working abroad. Only 50 police officers, detectives and special agents are assigned nationwide to monitor the Muslim population for potential terrorist plots.
Investigators complain that suspects in Belgium can be held for only 24 hours - compared with up to four days in France - under the vague charge of suspicion of association with criminals. And the hurdles to use intrusive investigative methods, like wiretaps, to obtain evidence in terrorist-related cases are more onerous than in many other European countries.
[ This article is two pages long. To read the rest of the article, go here (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/10/international/europe/10belgium.html?pagewanted=2&th&emc=th). ]