14 detained in raids linked to Belgian suicide bomber

Authorities detained 14 suspects today during dawn raids on homes of people connected to a Belgian female suicide bomber who struck in Iraq three weeks ago.

Police raided houses in Brussels and three other cities across Belgium where they picked up the suspects for interrogation, said an official.

Lieve Pellens, spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor’s office, confirmed a Belgian-born woman had carried out an attack in Iraq.

Other officials linked the woman, who was not identified, to a bomb strike against a US patrol in Iraq's capital on November 9. But US officials could not confirm the nationality of the attacker, who was the only one killed in the blast.

Pellens said authorities were searching the homes of several potential allies of the woman. Police carried out raids and detained 11 in the capital Brussels, and one each in southern Charleroi, northern Antwerp and eastern Riemst.

Media reports said the woman was born in Belgium and married a Muslim radical, with whom she drove to Iraq.

“We are looking for partners in crime more than searching in her immediate family,” said Pellens.

Belgium has been mentioned as a breeding ground for terrorists in the past and there are currently 13 Belgian and Moroccan nationals on trial for allegedly being members of an Islamic group suspected in recent bomb attacks in Spain and Morocco.

None of the defendants is accused of actively taking part in any terrorist attacks in Belgium, but some face charges of providing terrorists with forged identity papers, shelter and other logistical support. They face five years in prison if convicted of belonging to a terrorist organisation and 10 years if convicted of playing a co-ordinating role in aiding terrorists.

Prosecutors accuse them of being part of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, or GICM, which is suspected in the Casablanca bombings that killed 45 people in 2003 and last year’s Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people.

Islamic radical groups linked to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terror network are suspected of setting up networks in Belgium and other European nations with large Muslim communities.