The ambassador, currently on holiday in his homeland, was echoing his government's displeasure with the conduct of the legal case against members of the Turkish extremist movement DHKP-C. That started in 1999 when an apartment occupied by members of the group in Duinbergen was raided by police, and firearms and false documents found.

Seven members of the group, a Marxist extremist organisation, were tried, among them Fehriye Erdal, who was wanted by Turkey for the murder of a businessman. A request for extradition was denied, to Ankara's fury. The seven, one of whom has since died, were found guilty of various relatively minor offences including forgery and possession of firearms, and sentenced to various prison terms, but that verdict was overturned by the Court of Cassation. The verdict of the court of appeal in Antwerp, which reheard the case, was also overturned by Cassation.

In the meantime, Fehriye Erdal is in the wind: on the day of her sentencing in the original trial she gave her State Security minders the slip and escaped, never to be seen here since. Her compadres were last week expecting to hear the verdict in the third trial against them for the same offences, but the court in Brussels decided instead to postpone debates until October to allow the indictment to be fine-tuned.

For ambassador Tanlay, this was just the latest sign that the Belgian authorities want to bury the case against the DHKP-C members. "At some point, terrorism will also make an appearance in Belgium," the ambassador was reported to have said. "One day, if God wills it, something will happen to them, and then they will understand what terrorism is."