Police raid suspected terrorist rings

At the centre of the investigation is the Belgian Islamic Centre in Molenbeek (CIB) and related website Assabyle.com. Police are investigating their roles in the collection of funds for terror activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the recruitment of mujahideen, or Muslim fighters.

In a separate investigation in Antwerp, seven suspects were arrested in connection with an alleged plan to blow up a Belgian target. An eighth suspect was arrested later in the day. At the same time, in a related action, three men were arrested in Amsterdam and one in Aachen in Germany, where searches were also carried out.

The men are believed to belong to a pro-Chechen group known as the Caucasian Emirate, listed as a terrorist organisation by Russia and the United States. Three of the four arrested in Antwerp are also members of Sharia4Belgium, a pro-jihad organisation that hit the headlines when it helped disrupt a speaking engagement by writer Benno Bernard at Antwerp University. Sharia4Belgium has denied any links to a terrorist plan.According to police, the Chechen group used the internet to raise funds and volunteers for the struggle in Chechnya and other Central Asian republics formerly part of the Soviet Union. They also plotted an attack on a Belgian target, but that has not been identified.

The investigation has been going on since late last year, when an unidentified foreign intelligence service informed their Belgian colleagues of an Antwerp man's messages about a possible Belgian attack on an extremist online forum. In the year since, no specific target appears to have been selected.

The man was described as a 44-year-old of Chechen origin who has been living in Antwerp for 10 years with his wife and children. He is alleged to have worked from the Bangladeshi mosque in the city close to where he lives. His wife denied he was a terrorist. "We came here to flee the violence in Chechnya," she said.

In Brussels, the group of suspects centres on the so-called sheikh Ayachi Bassam of the Islamic Centre, who is currently in prison in Bari, Italy, on charges of human trafficking. His supporters in the capital are suspected of continuing to recruit mujahideen. Bassam's lawyer claimed the action was a political exercise in "vote catching" at his client's expense. "The Belgian justice system has been trying to prosecute Bassam for years, but the truth is they have never found even the shadow of any evidence," said Sébastien Courtoy. "This time will not be any different."

The current alert level for terrorist activity was not raised as a result of the police actions or the alleged plot, the government's crisis centre said. The level remains at two on a scale of one to four. "There are no elements which require a new evaluation of the situation by the Coordination Office for Threat Analysis (OCAD)," said spokesman Peter Mertens. "The house searches were carried out on the basis of information already in the possession of the federal police in Antwerp."

The two men arrested in Brussels will have their first appearance in court on 3 December, and the seven men originally arrested in Antwerp will appear in court in Mechelen on 7 December. The eighth man arrested in Antwerp was due to appear in court in Mechelen on Tuesday (30 November), after Flanders Today had gone to press.