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Belgium Al-Qaeda plotters sentenced
A trial in Belgium of 23 suspected Al-Qaeda militants has ended with convictions for all but five of the accused. The chief suspect - Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian who used to play professional football in Germany - was sentenced to 10 years in jail for plotting an attack on a military base housing US troops in 2001. A second Tunisian - Tarek Maroufi - was sentenced to six years in prison for organising the recruitment of al-Qaeda volunteers in Europe. Another 16 suspects received shorter sentences for a series of lesser offences - and five defendants were acquitted. Correspondents say the relatively modest prison terms reflect the fact that Belgium has no specific anti-terrorism laws. Memo to Belgium, you need to work on that. Trabelsi was charged with attempting to destroy public property, illegal arms possession and membership in a private militia. The BBCâs security correspondent Frank Gardner says the case is being closely watched by prosecutors all over Europe, and the verdicts will have implications far beyond the Brussels courtroom. The court heard that Trabelsi, 33, met al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden several times in Afghanistan and asked to become a suicide bomber. He says he was ordered to go to Belgium, pack a bomb into a lorry and blow it up - with him at the wheel - next to the canteen of the Kleine Brogel military base outside Brussels. But Trabelsi was arrested in Brussels two days after the 11 September, 2001 attacks on the United States. "Everything points to the fact that on the evening before his arrest, he was determined to carry out this project," judge Claire Degryse said in passing sentence at the heavily guarded Brussels Criminal Court. Tarek Maaroufi, for his part, was accused of involvement in a fake passport ring linked to the 9 September killing of anti-Taliban Afghan military commander Ahmad Shah Masood. Massood died at the hands of two suicide bombers allegedly travelling on false Belgian passports. Must have been out of French ones. Some of the co-defendants were tried as part of the bomb plot; others with recruiting volunteers in Europe for al-Qaeda. The Belgian authorities decided to combine the two cases in one huge anti-terrorism trial - the countryâs biggest ever. Posted by: Steve 2003-09-30 |
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