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| Europe |
| Belgium Wrestles With Counterterrorism Efforts |
| 2005-10-09 |
| 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. The driver was Khalid Bouloudo, a Belgian-born sometime baker and former Ford automobile factory worker. During a routine check, his name turned up on an Interpol watchlist, for an international arrest warrant from Morocco charging him with links to a Moroccan-based terrorist organization and involvement in suicide bombings in Casablanca in 2003. The random arrest set into motion a cascade of events that underscores the extent of the radicalization of young Muslims throughout Europe - and a rapidly expanding and home-grown terrorist threat. The case suggests connections to individuals and groups that have provided support to criminal and even terrorist operations in a number of other countries. This wide distribution of terrorist sympathizers and supporters 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 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 try to flee, counterterrorism forces immediately launched a series of raids throughout the country, dismantling over the next few months what they believe was a sophisticated network that supported the terror bombings in Casablanca and in Madrid in 2004 and that is also suspected of trying to recruit fighters for the insurgency in Iraq. Next month, 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 that specifically criminalizes a terrorist act and association with terrorists and imposes a prison sentence of up to 20 years. More at link |
| Posted by:Captain America |