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Europe
Family of Belgian suicide bomber raided
2005-11-30
Police raided 10 premises in Brussels overnight in a suspected link to reports on Tuesday that a Belgian woman recently carried out a suicide bomb attack in Iraq. The woman is thought to have carried out the bomb attack on 9 November near the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. About five or six people were possibly killed in the attack, news agency Belga reported. And according to an RTL France report, the suicide bomber was a young Belgian woman from Brussels who converted to Islam after marrying a radical Islamic man of Moroccan ancestry. The man is now also reportedly dead. Police have kept the woman's family under surveillance for some time and raided 10 homes on Tuesday night. The raids were reportedly co-ordinated at a federal level.

While no one has officially confirmed reports the woman carried out the bomb attack, various sources have indicated that the report is true. The Belgian judiciary has launched an investigation into the woman's contacts in Belgium. Newspaper 'De Standaard' has quoted US military sources saying the attack was against US soldiers and that none of them were killed in the attack. And there were two other bombings on 9 November, one in Baquba and one in the north-east of Baghdad. Which one the woman carried out, is yet to be confirmed.
Posted by:Seafarious

#6  I will do a quick search for it and post it if I find it. The article is too new for it to show up on google. One other point of the article was that they expected arrests in 2 or 3 days to close down as much of the terrorist cell that sent the Belgian woman to Iraq. But now we know the arrests began the day after the article was written.
Posted by: ed   2005-11-30 22:25  

#5  In the Belgian press, there was no mention of a leak with French intelligence .
Posted by: Clereting Pheack1834   2005-11-30 14:09  

#4  Oops, same story. More detail though. Could have sworn I saw that other story on Expatica yesterday, I think they pulled it.
Posted by: Steve   2005-11-30 11:59  

#3  Here it is:
14 suspects held in raids linked to suicide bomber

BRUSSELS — Belgian federal police arrested 14 people on Tuesday night in 14 house raids linked to the suicide bomb attack carried out by a Belgian woman in Iraq earlier this month. Police raided 14 homes in Brussels, Antwerp, Charleroi and Tongeren. Nine of the 14 suspects arrested will be ordered to appear at a later date in court. The majority of the suspects are Belgian, two of them are of Moroccan origin and one comes from Tunisia.

They have been charged with membership of a terrorist organisation on Belgian soil, newspaper 'De Standaard' reported on Wednesday.
Police seized documents during the house raids, but no explosives were found.

The raids are linked to a Belgian woman who carried out a suicide bomb attack on 9 November in Iraq. She is reportedly the first European woman to have conducted such an attack in Iraq.
Police have held the woman's family under surveillance for some time and decided to raid the targeted premises on Tuesday. A spokeswoman for the public prosecution office, Lieve Pellens, has confirmed that a Belgian national carried out a suicide bombing in Iraq. French television broadcaster RTL broke the story on Tuesday.

The woman has been described as a Belgian national living in Brussels. She converted to Islam after marrying a radical Islamic man. She then travelled to Iraq with her husband. Belgian media has reported that six people were killed in the suicide bomb attack. The woman's husband might also be dead.

Meanwhile, a 27-year-old man has been arrested near Paris in an operation linked to the Belgian raids. The man's identity has not been revealed.
He is suspected of holding links with a terrorist cell that sends Islamic fighters from Belgium to Iraq. The heart of the network is reportedly in Belgium, but the suspect allegedly sought volunteers in France also.

According to one source, the man is allegedly an acquaintance of the female suicide bomber. He can be remanded in custody for another four days.
Police also arrested two men who allegedly gave the suspect accommodation.
Posted by: Steve   2005-11-30 11:54  

#2  hey Ed, do you still remember where you read that article. Would like to read it, if possible.. thanks
Posted by: Clereting Pheack1834   2005-11-30 11:34  

#1  Read an article last night that the Belgian intelligence service is miffed that French intelligence leaked the woman's identity to RTL. Report said the Belgians would have to hurry and arrest members of the Belgian jihadi cell before they disappeared.
Posted by: ed   2005-11-30 10:19  

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