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BRUSSELS, Belgium Sept. 30 A former pro soccer player who joined the al-Qaida terrorist network was convicted and sentenced to prison Tuesday for plotting to bomb a NATO base believed to contain nuclear weapons. Nizar Trabelsi of Tunisia, who once played professional soccer in Germany, received the maximum sentence of 10 years in prison from a court that also convicted 17 other men and acquitted five others in the largest terrorism trial in Belgium's history. Trabelsi admitted planning to drive a car bomb into the canteen of the Kleine Brogel air base, a Belgian military post used by NATO where...

Terrorist planned attack on nuclear warhead stockpile By Philip Delves Broughton November 17 2002 The Sun-Herald An Al Qaeda terrorist has confessed that he planned to drive a giant explosive device into a United States air force bunker in Belgium believed to contain nuclear warheads. News of the plot came as the US warned that a broadcast thought to contain the words of Osama bin Laden foreshadowed a likely attack. The FBI said national landmarks and the aviation, oil and nuclear industries were all possible targets. In an interview with a Belgian radio station, Tunisian Nizar Trabelsi, 31, a former...

Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion. Prosecutor asks for 3 more months to complete terrorist probe Associated Press Worldstream ANTHONY DEUTSCH; Associated Press Writer September 2, 2002 Monday 10:43 AM Eastern Time ROTTERDAM, Netherlands The public prosecutor on Monday asked for three more months to complete his case against four men accused of plotting terrorist attacks against U.S. targets in France and Belgium. Prosecutors say that in addition to the Paris embassy, the group targeted the Kleine-Brogel base in northeast Belgium, where around 100 U.S. Air Force personnel are...

Fourteen people arrested in Belgium on suspicion of plotting to free a convicted al-Qaeda member from jail have been released without charge. The suspects were released for lack of evidence after 24 hours in custody. They were suspected of plotting to free Tunisian national Nizar Trabelsi, jailed in Belgium in 2003 for planning to attack US targets. In spite of the releases, the interior ministry said heightened security measures would remain in place. The federal prosecutor's office said searches at suspects' homes had yielded no explosives, weapons or other evidence to persuade the court to keep them in jail. "According...

An alleged Islamic militant has told a Belgian court how he plotted to bomb a military base on an al-Qaeda mission. Nizar Trabelsi, a former Tunisian professional footballer, told how Osama Bin Laden's network sent him two years ago to Belgium to bomb the Kleine Brogel base, which houses nuclear missiles. He is one of 23 alleged Islamic militants on trial. Only eight of them are in custody, while five are still on the run and the others face lesser charges. "I was supposed to go alone in a van. The bomb was behind me," Mr Trabelsi told the Brussels...

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...

Nizar Trabelsi acknowledges to have prepared an attack in connection with Ben Laden Thursday November 14, 2002 - 19h10 GMT BRUSSELS, Nov. 14 (AFP) - Nizar Trabelsi, a terrorist supposed stopped in Brussels on September 13, 2001, recognized that it had prepared an attack against an American base of NATO in Belgium in connection with network Al-Qaïda of Oussama Ben Laden, in a diffused exclusive interview Thursday evening by public radio-télévision Belgian RTBF. The RTBF indicated to have collected "at the time of long telephone conversations" the "confessions" of Trabelsi, which is held with the prison of Brussels of...

AMSTERDAM - According the Dutch justice department a group of muslim-extremists arrested in Rotterdam plotted an attack on a nuclear target, just across the Belgian border with the Netherlands. It looks that they were not able to plan much of the operation, but for the justice department this information could be of great importance in the case against this group. A French and an Algerian man that were arrested two days after September 11 in Rotterdam, and an Algerian ex-roommate that was later arrested in Canada, planned an attack on the NATO-base 'Kleine Brogel' in Flamish Limburg. At that base,...