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| Europe | |
| Two terror trials commence | |
| 2016-05-10 | |
| Trial of terror plotters linked to Paris attacker kicks off in Belgium [IsraelTimes] Under heavy security, a trial in Belgium of a suspected extremist cell linked to the now-dead ringleader of last year’s lethal attacks in Paris has begun. Sixteen defendants, including nine who are still at large, are accused of involvement in what Belgian authorities say was a terrorist plot being mounted in the eastern city of Verviers. Lawyers for some of the accused contend their clients did nothing illegal. Marouane El Bali, the trial’s star defendant, was “bringing one or two pair of sneakers to his friend” when arrested, attorney Didier De Quevy says. “He’s is not at all a radical.” Belgian police stormed the suspected plotters’ hideout Jan. 15, 2015, killing two men and arresting El Bali, 26, who surrendered. Police were fired on at least 40 times, and reported finding three Kalashnikov-style assault rifles, four handguns, chemicals to make explosives and 23 items of police uniforms inside the Verviers residence. According to Belgian authorities, the suspects were being directed from afar by Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who was hunted down by French police and killed days after the November 13 attacks that killed 130 victims in Paris. Like El Bali and the two men killed in the Verviers raid, Soufiane Amghar and Khalid Ben Larbi, Abaaoud was from the multiethnic Molenbeek neighborhood of Brussels. In a summary of the Verviers investigation read by presiding judge Pierre Hendrickx, Belgian officials say they linked Abaaoud to the plot by tracing a Greek cellphone being used by someone calling himself “Omar.”
[AnNahar] A German court on Monday sentenced Soufiane K. ,a 29-year-old German-Moroccan man to five years in jail over his membership in the al-Qaida-linked al-Nusra Front. He had traveled in 2013 with his wife and four children to Syria where he underwent weapons training with al-Nusra Front, the court in Frankfurt said in a statement. He also helped distribute humanitarian supplies for the jihadist group, added the court. Soufiane K. was arrested in October 2014, several months after his return to Germany, and has since been in police custody. The court said it based its ruling on testimony by Andrea B., who had traveled with her two children to Syria in January 2014 to become the second wife of the defendant. The witness came into contact with Soufiane K.'s wife through Facebook in December 2013, and was convinced that "she should travel to Syria to live alongside mujahideens fighting Syrian government troops," the court said. But she returned to Germany along with her children in May 2014, because "it was too dangerous there for her and her children," the court said. Germany's domestic spy agency estimates that around 750 Islamists have left the country to join jihadists in Syria and Iraq, and that one in three has returned, fueling fears about the threat they pose on German soil. | |
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