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Posted on 04/14/2003 2:56:50 PM PDT by knighthawk
BRUSSELS: A Tunisian former professional soccer player suspected of planning bombing attacks on US targets in Europe will stand trial May 22 along with 11 alleged accomplices, a Belgian court ruled Monday.
Nizar Trabelsi faces charges including attempting to destroy property by explosion, possession of illegal arms and membership of a private militia.
He is suspected of involvement in plots to blow up the American embassy in Paris and a Belgian air force base where about 100 US military personnel are stationed.
Full details of the case against him and the other defendants were not immediately released.
Belgian media reported the group included citizens of Belgium, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. Trabelsi and three others are in pretrial detention, while others are free on bail. Some reportedly face lesser charges including criminal association, receiving stolen goods and forgery.
Trabelsi was arrested in September 2001, just after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.
In a radio interview from his cell last November, he acknowledged training with associates of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and planning to bomb Kleine Brogel air base in northeastern Belgium, where the United States is believed to store nuclear weapons.
In the same interview, he denied involvement in the plot to bomb the US embassy in Paris.
Belgian prosecutors have linked his case to that of another group suspected of ties to al-Qaeda that allegedly supplied false passports to suicide bombers who killed anti-Taliban leader Afghan leader Ahmed Shah Massood on Sept. 9, 2001.
Both groups are to face trial together starting May 22.
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