Belgium seeks trial of 13 on terror charges

A Brussels judge today ordered 13 people to stand trial on charges of aiding and abetting terrorists, including those suspected in last year’s Madrid train bombings and in a 2003 bomb explosion in Casablanca.

The trial later this year would be the first test for a 2004 law that made it a crime to consort with terrorists.

Prosecutors accused the 13 of membership in the Groupe Islamique Combattant Marocain (CICM) – an anti-Western group formed by veterans of the 1980s Afghan war against the Soviet Union – and said they had provided terrorists with forged identity papers and shelter.

A fourteenth suspect was released, and four others were named in court but were in foreign jails, including three in Spain linked with the Madrid trains attacks that killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,500 on March 11, 2004.

Several of the 13 suspects sent for trial were born and raised in Maaseik, a town of 24,000 on Belgium’s eastern border with the Netherlands. One, Khalid Bouloudo, 30, is alleged to be the Belgian co-ordinator of the GICM.

His lawyer, Katelijne van Bellinghen, said there were “serious question marks” about her client’s alleged membership in a terrorist organisation.

“Until now, we have seen no concrete elements in the prosecution’s case that would clearly prov any sort of membership (in a terrorist group) by any defendant, or if they in any way aided and abetted such an organisation,” she told the VRT television network.

Another suspect, Abdelkader Hakimi, is linked to the Madrid attacks.

The defendants also include Mourad Chabarou who prosecutors say sheltered a suspected terrorist in the Madrid attacks. Police say his Brussels apartment contained fingerprints belonging to Mohammed Afalah, one of the suspects in the Madrid bombings.

In Maaseik, Bouloudo and his Muslim friends were known to Mayor Jan Creemers.

Creemers told reporters that a few years ago, six Muslim women in his town suddenly showed up in public completely covered in bhurkas.

“I didn’t understand that,” Creemers said.

“Born and raised here! That scared many people” in Maaseik, whose Muslim population totals under 800, Creemers said.

His town council passed a bylaw last year prohibiting anyone from being completely covered in public or face an £84 fine. Five women have since shed the bhurka, but Bouloudo’s wife was recently fined for wearing a bhurka in public.

Prosecutors said all GICM suspects take their cue from extreme fundamentalist Islamic teachings, including that preached by Abu Qatada, the radical preacher Britain seeks to expel.

Last year, a Dutch court extradited Bouloudo – who worked as a pastry baker in the Netherlands – to Belgium.

At a Dutch court last year, he denied involvement in terrorist activities. By then, Belgian police had arrested 15 other terrorist suspects in Maaseik, Brussels and other Belgian cities.