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Belgium struggles to shut down new terror network
Belgian police charged five people Thursday with involvement in a network that recruited and sent volunteers to Iraq, including a Belgian woman who blew herself up in a failed attack on U.S. troops near Baghdad last month. Belgian police charged five people Thursday with involvement in a network that recruited and sent volunteers to Iraq, including a Belgian woman who blew herself up in a failed attack on U.S. troops near Baghdad last month.On Wednesday, Belgian police confirmed that Muriel Degauque, 38, was the suicide bomber involved in that attack. "It is the first time that we see that a Western woman, a Belgian, marrying a radical Muslim, and is converted up to the point of becoming a jihad fighter," said Glenn Audenaert, federal police director. The woman's mother, Liliane Degauque, told local TV networks that her daughter was "so nice," but changed when she married an Algerian man and turned to Islamic fundamentalism. "When I saw the first pictures, I said to myself, 'It is my girl.' For three weeks already I tried to contact her by telephone, but I got the answering machine," she told the RTBF network on Thursday. The European Union justice and interior ministers Thursday approved a strategy to fight the recruitment of Europeans into terrorist groups. "We face a threat from people who come to Europe from the outside, and we face a threat from people who live in Europe," said Gijs de Vries, the EU's top anti-terrorism official. The strategy includes monitoring the Internet and travel to conflict zones. It is one of 12 priority measures being fast-tracked by the 25-country EU alliance after July attacks on public transportation in London by British bombers, who also died in the attacks. Most contentious are proposals to retain data such as e-mails and telephone call records. In Belgium, police charged five of 14 suspects with involvement in a terror network that sent volunteers such as Degauque to Iraq. A 15th suspect was picked up in France. "This action shows how international terrorism tries to set up networks in western European nations," Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said. Before she finished high school, Degauque lived in Charleroi in southern Belgium. Authorities say Degauque went on to become a member of a terror cell that embraced al-Qaeda's ideology. It included her second husband, a man of Moroccan origin who died in a separate terrorist attack in Iraq. "This is the Belgian kamikaze killed in Iraq," read the headline of Thursday's La Derniere Heure newspaper, over a picture of a smiling young woman looking into the camera. Magnus Ranstorp, director of the center for the study of terrorism and violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, said fundamentalist women are a growing threat because they don't conform to terrorist profiles. Converts such as Degauque "are much more radical because they have to prove themselves," he said. The ability of radical Islamic groups to recruit is "indicative of the failure of social integration policies," Ranstorp said. "It's a huge problem in Europe. A small group can unleash large social forces that may be difficult to contain." Posted by: Dan Darling 2005-12-02 |
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