Note: Video included.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7777312.stm
Page last updated at 01:48 GMT, Friday, 12 December 2008
“Belgium detains al-Qaeda suspects”
ARTICLE SNIPEPT: “Police in Belgium say they have arrested 14 people suspected of being members of the al-Qaeda network.
Federal Prosecutor Johan Delmulle said police believed one of those held was planning to carry out a suicide attack.
The suspect had been given the go-ahead for the attack and had already said good-bye to his family, he added.
Correspondents say the authorities appear to have been prompted to act immediately as EU leaders were holding an end-of-year meeting in Brussels.”
ARTICLE SNIPPET: “Officials have not released the names of all the people arrested on Thursday, but Belgian media are reporting that they include Malika El Aroud, a Moroccan-born Belgian online writer who was accused by a judge in 2003 of having “utterly extremist ideas”.
Ms El Aroud’s first husband, Abdessatar Dahmane, died in the suicide bombing in Afghanistan in September 2001 that killed the leader of the anti-Taleban Northern Alliance, Ahmed Shah Massoud.”
Attack prevented.
It kind of gives one a 9/10/01 kind of feeling here.
Good for Belgium and all who may have helped to
prevent this attack.
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/12/11/world/worldwatch/entry4661854.shtml
December 11, 2008, 7:21 AM
“Belgians Arrest 14 In Terror Raids”
Posted by Sheila MacVicar| 10
ARTICLE SNIPPET: “Update, 9:25 EST: All 14 of the suspects will go before investigating magistrates Thursday afternoon. Under Belgian law, they must be charged or released within 24 hours.”
ARTICLE SNIPPET: “A video was sent to Belgian and Dutch TV networks at the end of November threatening attacks in Belgium.
Sources say documents and computers have been seized, but there has been no indication that explosives were found.
The investigation by Belgian authorities began in Dec. 2007, following interception of plans to help convicted al Qaeda in Belgium leader Nizar Trabelsi escape from jail. Police say they concentrated their probe on a group of Belgian Islamic extremists who traveled to either Afghanistan or Pakistan to participate in combat and undergo training and who are “closely linked” to “important al Qaeda figures.””
Massoud—who loathed the extremism of the Taliban as much as he did the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union—once told me he was fighting not only for a free Afghanistan but for a free world. -----—Sebastian Junger
[Sebastian Junger on Afghanistan’s Slain Rebel Leader Ahmad Shah Massoud National Geographic ^ | October 2001]
SEPTEMBER 9, 2001 : (AFGHANISTAN : ASSASSINATION OF NORTHERN ALLIANCE LEADER AHMAD SHAH MASSOUD [FORMER DEFENSE MINISTER OF AFGHANISTAN 1992-to-96 ]-- WITH HELP FROM FRENCH TERRORIST WILLIE BRIGITTE -- See LeT, SYDNEY CELL, VA JIHAD) ... Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was killed by two men posing as documentary filmmakers two days before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.... [French terrorist Willie] Brigitte [was later linked] to the supply of two stolen Belgian passports that assassins Karim Touzani and Kacem Bakkali used to gain access to the northern Afghanistan stronghold of Massoud's northern Afghanistan stronghold... A TV camera believed to have contained the bomb is known to have been stolen from a French camera operator in Grenoble [France] on Christmas Eve 2000. Massoud's murder was a severe setback to moves to oust the fundamentalist Islamic regime that harboured al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. ------ "Deportee tie to assassination," By Peter Fray, Paris & Mark Forbes, Canberra, The Age [Australia] , October 29, 2003 ; This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/10/28/1067233172665.html
SEPTEMBER 9, 2001 : (BRIGITTE, PARIS CELL-- see LeT) A Frenchman under investigation in [2003 in ] Australia and France for possible terrorist activities was also suspected of links to the assassination of an Afghan leader, authorities said. Willie Virgile Brigitte, 35, is in custody in a Paris area jail where he is being held on suspicion of association with a terror group, French police and justice officials said. Investigations are under way in France and Australia into Brigitte's alleged links to the al-Qaeda terror network, French officials said today. A judicial official said that Brigitte was also suspected of running false passports to the assassins of former anti-Taliban rebel leader in Afghanistan, Ahmed Shah Massood. ----Terror suspect linked to Afghan assassination,AP via The Age ^ | October 28, 2003 | NA\
SEPTEMBER 13, 2001 : (BIN LADEN WRITES MULLAH OMAR) Five years after the Taliban opponent was slain by a bomb hidden in the camera, a former Taliban official on Saturday described how al-Qaida staged the killing — two days before the Sept. 11 attack on America — hoping to strike a fatal blow to the pro-U.S. Northern Alliance. Waheed Mozhdah, director of the then-Taliban Foreign Ministry's Middle East and Africa department, also showed The Associated Press a copy of what he said was a signed letter dated Sept. 13, 2001, from bin Laden to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, urging him to launch an offensive against the alliance.
In the letter, written in Arabic, bin Laden said that if America failed to respond to the Sept. 11 attacks, it would decline as a superpower. But if the U.S. started fighting, he added, its economy would suffer a major blow and it would face the same destiny as the Soviet Union — whose ill-fated 1980s occupation of Afghanistan heralded its disintegration. (Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
MAY 2002 : (UK : YASSIR EL SIRRI IS FREED AND THEN REARRESTED -- SEE MASSOUD ASSASSINATION, 1993 WTC/LANDMARK PLOT'S OMAR ABDURRAMAN, LYNNE STEWART ) LONDON (AP) -- An Egyptian man [Yassir el-Sirri] accused of conspiring to assassinate an Afghan northern alliance leader was freed Thursday after a terrorist charge against him was dismissed -- but was immediately re-arrested on an extradition warrant from the United States.
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...--- Egyptian accused of plotting to kill Afghan northern alliance leader freed, re-arrested New Jersey Online (AP) ^ | May 16, 2002 | JILL LAWLESS *********
Updated information on this guy:
LONDON (AP) — An Egyptian activist accused by U.S. authorities of aiding a Muslim cleric with links to the al-Qaida terrorist network professed his innocence during a court hearing Friday. The United States is seeking to extradite Yassir el-Sirri, who lives in London, on charges of sending money to the Afghanistan-based family of Omar Abdel-Rahman, a Muslim cleric identified as the leader of an al-Qaida-linked terrorist organization known as the Islamic Group. ``I would like to make it known that I am innocent and what the United States government is doing is just fabricating a case against me. I am innocent,'' el-Sirri said through an interpreter.
El-Sirri, who is free on bail, was not asked to enter a formal plea during the hearing at Bow Street Magistrates Court.
Abdel-Rahman is serving a life sentence in the United States for plotting to blow up New York City landmarks in the 1990s. El-Sirri was one of four people charged in New York last month with helping Abdel-Rahman spread terrorist messages.
The U.S. extradition warrant alleges that el-Sirri, 39, sent money to Afghanistan in May 2001, ``knowing or having reasonable cause to suspect that the money would or may be used for the purpose of terrorism within the jurisdiction of the government of the U.S.A.''
Lawyers for el-Sirri said that their client ran a London-based Islamic organization that regularly sent money to the families of Islamic prisoners. They argued the money sent to Afghanistan, which amounted only to a few hundred dollars, was part of his usual humanitarian work and was not terrorist funding.
El-Sirri was arrested in Britain in October [2001] and charged with conspiring to assassinate Afghan northern alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massood. Massood was mortally wounded in Afghanistan by two suicide bombers on Sept. 9. British prosecutors accused el-Sirri of using his organization, the Islamic Observation Center, to give fake journalistic credentials to two men who detonated a bomb hidden in their camera while they interviewed Massood. -------------- Egyptian Faxes Terror Aid Charge AP 3 posted on 06/02/2002 2:31:53 PM PDT by cgk
OCTOBER 8, 2002 : (ANTWERP : ARREST OF A MOROCCAN IN THE CASE OF THE ASSASSINATION OF AFGHAN NORTHERN ALLIANCE LEADER MASSOOD) BRUSSELS -- A Belgian court extended Tuesday the detention of a 35-year-old Moroccan accused in connection with the killing last year of the Afghan anti-Taleban commander Ahmad Shah Masood, officials said. The suspect, whose identity has not been officially revealed, was arrested on October 8 in Antwerp and has been charged with complicity in the September 2001 killing of the Afghan opposition leader, a spokesman as said.
The Brussels court extended his detention warrant by a month pending an investigation into an operation to provide false passports, AFP quoted prosecution spokesman Jos Colpin as saying.
Belgian press reports have named the suspect as Ahmed Ellattah, and said he has family ties with Mohamed Sliti, a Belgian national suspected of having helped arrange the trips by Masood's two killers to Afghanistan. According to the daily La Derniere Heure, Ellattah has denied any involvement in the plot, although he has admitted that he knew some of those implicated.
Masood, a charismatic fighter who led the Northern Alliance coalition fighting the Taleban regime, was killed by two suicide bombers posing as journalists. His assassination came just two days before the September 11 attacks in the United States, which sparked U.S. reprisals that led to the ousting of the Taleban late last year.
---Belgium Keeps Suspect in Masood Killing Behind Bars Tehran Times ^ | October 16 2002 [IRAN]
AUGUST 8, 2006 : (ADEL TEBOURSKI IS DEPORTED FROM FRANCE TO TUNISIA -- see ASSASSINATION OF MASSOUD) France has deported a Tunisian man to his homeland despite protests that he could face torture there. Adel Tebourski, 42, was put on an Air France flight back to Tunisia on Monday, officials said. Tebourski had served a jail sentence in France after being convicted of helping the killers of Afghan resistance leader Ahmed Shah Masood in 2001. The French authorities described Tebourski as a serious threat to national security.
French campaigners have said he could be tortured in Tunisia, and the UN torture committee last month called on Paris to suspend his deportation, the French news agency AFP reports. A court in Paris handed Tebourski a six-year jail term in 2005 for offering logistical support to the killers of Masood.
During the trial, Tebourski admitted he was a member of an Islamist cell linked to one of the Tunisian killers. Three other men were sentenced to between two and seven years by the Paris court.
Masood, a leading general in Afghanistan's anti-Taleban Northern Alliance, was blown up in 2001 by two Tunisian men posing as journalists.
The death of the man revered as the "Lion of the Panjshir Valley" stunned the country's then rebel forces, who were soon called to fight alongside US troops in a campaign against the Taleban in late 2001.-------France deports convicted (islamist) Tunisian BBC News ^ | 08/08/2006