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BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Belgian police on Friday arrested a man suspected of trying to blow up a synagogue in what could be the latest in a string of anti-Jewish attacks across Europe linked to violence in the Middle East.Jules Mathieu, a spokesman for the public prosecutor's office, said the man was suspected of having placed five gas bottles in a car and torching it in front of the synagogue in a densely populated area of the southern town of Charleroi.There was no explosion and the blaze was rapidly put out by firefighters based nearby.Several synagogues and Jewish buildings in European...

On 9 November, a 38-year old Belgian named Muriel, blew herself to pieces in Baghdad near a group of Iraqi policemen, killing five other people. The woman had converted to Islam after marrying a Belgian of Moroccon origin. Her husband was shot down by American troops. The American authorities informed the Belgian authorities of the woman’s identity a few weeks ago, but Brussels kept it secret. Yesterday evening the Franco-Luxemburgian network RTL announced the news. Last night, the Belgian police arrested 14 people. Nine of them are Belgians, mostly of foreign origin, three are Moroccans and two are Tunisians. They...

Two passengers with names linked to Islamic terrorism were on board the Air France flight that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 228 on board, it has emerged. French secret servicemen established the connection while working through the list of those who boarded the doomed Airbus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on May 31. Agents are now trying to establish dates of birth for the two dead passengers, and family connections. There is a possibility that the name similarities are simply a "macabre coincidence," the source added, but the revelation is still being "taken very seriously." A source working...

"IT'S NOT SO MUCH THAT THE HAMAS OFFICER WAS KILLED... ...it's that he was killed operating a mortar that his subordinates were not firing, because they refused to come out of hiding."

Two Moroccans arrested in Italy yesterday wanted to blow up the Milan Cathedral on Christmas. They hoped an attack during the busy holiday would cost dozens of lives. This according to tapped phone calls, reports La Repubblica. The two belonged to an Islamic terror cell which had been followed by the Italian police already for months... Rachid Ilhami (31) and Abdelkader Ghafir (43) were arrested in Giussano, a city 25km away from Milan. The detectives gathered from tapped phone calls and confiscated computer files that the two also prepared attacks on a supermarket and a police bureau. They are arrested...

THE HAGUE, 07/11/08 - TV presenter Prem Radhakishun, himself black and a strong advocate of multiculturalism, now feels safer in the proximity of white racists than among Moroccan teenagers. In an interview on Radio 1 yesterday, he expressed his frustration in a tirade. On his TV programme Premtime, produced by public broadcaster NPS, Radhakishun has tried for some years to give a realistic picture of the problems of the multicultural society. He regularly visits old city districts for street interviews. Radhakishun, a Hindu originally from Surinam, has always defended the position of Moroccan youngsters and sees it as his task...

THE HAGUE, 16/10/08 - Labour (PvdA) continues to waver between tough and soft policies for dealing with young Moroccan troublemakers. This time, PvdA MP Hans Spekman has chosen a rigorous approach. "You have to humiliate them". In many cities, young Moroccans are responsible for criminal activities and media agree the taboo on discussing the problem has been broken. But among the major parties, the PvdA in particular seems to have no idea what tone it should set on this sensitive subject. Tough statements are invariably followed by soothing words that seem to deny the problems again, but these are then...

THE HAGUE, 08/10/08 - The established political order appears slowly but surely to want to return to political correctness on Moroccan criminals. In a three-stage rocket display, Gouda's police chief, Mayor Cohen of Amsterdam and Justice Minister Hirsch Ballin have said one after the other that the tone of the debate is too harsh. In Gouda, bus company Connexxion's drivers went on strike recently in protest against Moroccan teenage criminals. Various journalists visiting Gouda were then assaulted and robbed and a plainclothes policeman was stabbed in the buttocks. More 'incidents' followed and the Lower House held an emergency debate in...

THE HAGUE, 02/10/08 - An organisation representing Turkish-Dutch parents claims that the Dutch government encourages youth crime by rewarding the perpetrators with clubhouses and subsidies. The more serious the crime level, the more generous the politicians become, it says. The Utrecht neighbourhood Kanaleneiland has become notorious in recent years for problems with young Moroccans, which led to a ban on forming groups in the area. The neighbourhood is also plagued by about 40 young Turkish troublemakers, the Turkish Parents Foundation (STO) says, but much more attention is paid to the Moroccans. STO chairman Halil Nalbantoglu said in newspaper De Pers...

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Gangs of rioters set fire to cars and garbage trucks in northern Copenhagen on Friday, the sixth night of rioting and vandalism that has spread from the capital to other Danish cities, police said on Saturday.Five youths were arrested in the capital on Friday after 28 cars and 35 garbage trucks were burned, Copenhagen police duty officer Jakob Kristensen told Reuters. Danish media said arrests in other towns brought to 29 the number of people police were holding. Scores of cars and several schools have been vandalized or burned in the past week. Police could give no...

Amsterdam (2 January) - Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen says the authorities have failed in their dealings with problematic youths; so far there has been no decrease in violence. The mayor says co-ordination between the various social services leaves much to be desired. Many low-income families have too many, for-the-most-part ineffective, social workers. Mr Cohen also pointed to the gap between the poorer neighbourhoods on the periphery of Amsterdam and the upscale canal zone in the centre. On New Year's Eve groups of Moroccan youths attacked a police station in Amsterdam, breaking windows and setting fire to several police cars. There...

Amsterdam - Dutch police arrested three people in Amsterdam's Osdorp neighbourhood on Sunday evening on suspicion of attempted arson. They had a jerrycan full of petrol and one of the three also had fireworks with him. Police detained them as they had no reasonable explanation for the petrol or the fireworks. Tensions have been high in several Amsterdam neighbourhoods after a mentally disturbed Moroccan man stabbed two police officers and was subsequently shot dead. Gangs of youths, mainly from immigrant backgrounds, smashed windows and torched cars for several evenings in a row after the fatal shooting.

Bilal B. attacked police officers 15 October 2007 AMSTERDAM – The man, who was shot by a police officer at the police station of the Amsterdam district Slotervaart and died shortly afterwards on Sunday, was in contact with members of the Hofstad terrorist organisation in 2005. It was Bilal B., a man of Moroccan descent living in Amsterdam. Chief public prosecutor Leo de Wit said this at a press conference on Monday. The police and the General Intelligence and Security Service, AIVD had had consultations about Bilal B’s contacts with the Hofstad group, according to De Wit. "Several members of...

“Youths” Kick Man to Death on Crowded Antwerp Bus The Belgian state is no longer able to guarantee the security of its citizens. On Saturday afternoon Guido Demoor, a 54-year old Flemish train conductor on his way to work, was kicked to death by six “youths” on a crowded bus near Antwerp’s Central Station. The incident recalls the rush-hour murder ten weeks ago of Joe Van Holsbeeck, 17 years of age, in a crowded Brussels Central Station on 12 April. Guido Demoor, a father of two, intervened when six “youths” got on bus 23 in Antwerp and began to intimidate...

Moroccans learn to write Berber By Martha Dixon BBC News, Morocco In a village school perched on a hill on the edge of Morocco's Atlas Mountains, Amazigh children are learning in their own language. The Berber script - Tifinagh - is related to Egyptian hieroglyphics Morocco has been dominated by Arabic culture since the seventh century when the Arabs swept across the Middle East and North Africa in the name of Islam. Now the original inhabitants of this country are reasserting their influence. The word Amazigh means free or noble, but the Arabs called the Amazigh people Berbers - or...

Six of those detained in operation involving around 100 police officers are Moroccans. MADRID - Spanish police on Friday arrested 12 people with suspected links to Islamic extremist movements and those who carried out the Madrid train bombings last year, the interior ministry announced. The ministry said four of those arrested had close ties to Youssef Belhadj, the man believed to be Al-Qaeda's spokesman in Europe who was extradited Friday from Belgium to Spain on suspicion of involvement in the March 2004 attacks. The ministry added that six of those detained in the operation involving around 100 police officers were...

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - Prosecutors opened their case Monday against 12 men accused of belonging to a terror network suspected in the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh and plots to attack prominent Dutch politicians. The defendants, mostly young Muslims of North African ancestry, were arrested within days of Van Gogh's death on Nov. 2 - a killing that shocked the nation and triggered retaliatory attacks on Islamic sites. Van Gogh, a distant relative of painter Vincent Van Gogh, was shot and stabbed on a busy Amsterdam street. The killer cut his throat and, in a note pinned to the...

MADRID (Reuters) - A Spanish judge has ordered two half brothers with close links to a key suspect in the Madrid train bombings held without bail, according to a court source. High Court Judge Juan del Olmo on Saturday ordered Moroccan-born Brahim and Mohamed Moussaten, both aged 20, jailed on suspicion of cooperating with "an armed group". The half-brothers had close family ties to Youssef Belhadj, who Spain wants to extradite from Belgium where he was arrested in connection with the March 11 Madrid bombings that killed 191 people. Spanish investigators believe the Moroccan-born Belhadj may be the al Qaeda...

MADRID, Spain - Spanish police arrested four Moroccans on the Canary Island of Lanzarote on suspicion of being members of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group. One is believed to have had a possible role in the Madrid train bombings, the Interior Ministry said. The four were suspected of setting up a logistical base on the island following recent arrests of members of the group in France and Belgium, the Interior Ministry said on Friday. The Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group is part of the radical Salafia Jihadia movement and has close links to al-Qaida, the ministry said. It is believed to...

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WHEN Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician, collected his post from the letterbox on Wednesday he got an unpleasant surprise. Among the bills and junk mail was a letter addressing him as “ugly dog”. It told him he would soon be beheaded. It was an unnerving way to start the day. Only 24 hours earlier Theo van Gogh, the film maker who had often attacked radical Muslims, had been riding along on his bicycle when a Muslim fanatic first shot and then butchered him on a busy street with the nonchalance of an abattoir worker.

BRUSSELS, June 8 (Reuters) - Belgian police have arrested 15 people on suspicion of planning terror attacks in coordinated raids that also spanned Italy, France and Spain, officials said on Tuesday. Italy earlier arrested an Egyptian man considered to be a mastermind of the Madrid train bombings in the first Europe-wide raids on Islamic militants linked to the March attack in which 191 people were killed. "We know them to be part of a terrorist group," the director of the federal police bureau of Brussels, Glenn Audenaert, told reporters. He said 200 police were involved in the operation and that...

ROTTERDAM, Wednesday - The construction of what will be the largest mosque in Europe got underway in Rotterdam yesterday. For the Moroccan community, a "dream has come true", stated M. Al Sayegh on behalf of the Essalam Mosque management as the foundation stone was laid. A great deal of commotion surrounded the arrival of the mosque during the past few months. The municipality agreed in principle with the Essalam foundation that the original design would be adjusted. The 50 metre high minarets and the large dome were too Arabian, considered alderman Pastors. But last week, the mosque reported it was...

ROME: Italian police said on Sunday they had arrested three Moroccans, one of them a Muslim cleric, for suspected links to fundamentalist Islamic cells. The three, detained on the request of Moroccan authorities, are accused of association with "terrorist" groups and fundraising to finance subversive activities, police said. "The operation took place last night in a number of Italian cities," a spokesman for the Varese police, near Milan, told Reuters, adding that all three men were Moroccan. Police in the central city of Florence said Mohamed Rafiq, who used to be a cleric at a mosque in the city outskirts,...

ZEIST - Moroccan schoolchildren from Zeist molested seven adult females. One of the reasons is the lack of sexual education in a complex society. 'But one also gets the feeling that there is no respect'. 'Moroccan youths have a distorted view of women' Just around the corner in the 'Laan van Vollenhove' in Zeist the junk is piled up high next to a notorious flat. The lane also has countless of dark spots, where seven woman were molested, insulted and humiliated by Moroccan schoolchildren. Amongst them two brothers of 8 and 11 years. Their father denied the accusations fiercly. Jan...

AS the net closed in on alleged Bali mastermind Hambali - Asia's most wanted man, who was arrested in Thailand a month ago - it transpired that he was carrying a forged Spanish passport. It was yet another piece in the jigsaw puzzle linking global terrorism to Spain. The al-Qa'ida cell in Spain made videos of potential targets in the US including the twin towers in New York. It also had videos of terrorist training camps in Indonesia and Afghanistan with footage on the preparation of car bombs. The pilots of the suicide flights met in Spain. Part of al-Qa'ida's...

A court in Rabat has sentenced three Moroccans to lengthy prison sentences after they were found guilty of terrorist offences. The three men were given sentences ranging from 7 to 20 years for a number of crimes, including co-ordinating terrorist attacks. A fourth accused, a Frenchman, was acquitted. He had been charged with failing to inform the authorities of a terrorist plot. The three Moroccans were arrested in connection with the bombings last May in Casablanca, but they were actually charged with unrelated terrorist activities. Moroccan police arrested hundreds of militant Muslims following the attacks in Casablanca, in which 44...

Moroccans move to protect tourism as bombers 'admit links to terror network' By Elizabeth Nash in Rabat 21 May 2003 Two of the suspected suicide bombers who struck Casablanca on Friday have indicated under questioning that they had links with international terror networks, the authorities said yesterday. The two had recently returned from "a suspect country", said to be Afghanistan. All 14 killers had been identified, Mustafa Sahel, the Interior Minister, said. They were all poor Moroccans in their twenties, mostly students. One was a car park attendant. At least eight came from the Sidi Moumen shanty town on Casablanca's...

ROME (ANP) - Police in Badia Polesine located in the northeast of Italy, arrested five Moroccans. They were in possession of 1 kilo of the explosive C4. Police suspect they are members of a terrorist group. One of the five is seen as the spirutal leader of the muslims in Badia Polesine. In an appartment, styled as a mosque, maps were found of the provinces Verona, Padua and Treviso. Some buildings on these maps were marked, like the NATO building in Verona, the Antoniuscathedral in Padua and certain bureaus of security agencies.

According to the weekly news magazine Vrij Nederland, The Netherlands is vulnerable to attacks by Islamic terrorists. The magazine is basing its claims on a confidential Ministry of Justice report. US citizens in The Netherlands, Jews and lapsed Muslims are thought to be particularly vulnerable. The magazine, citing the report Islam, the constitutional state, security and integration, says Moroccans, Somalis, and Eritreans are particularly susceptible to manipulation by terrorist groups. The Ministry of Justice is refusing to discuss the contents of the report, saying that it is the just the first version and still needs a lot of work.

ASSEN - A lasting hell, that way the family L. from Assen descirbes their life in the past year. Their daughter Miranda (13) was kidnapped 20 times during the last 16 months by a group of young Moroccans and was offered as a sex-slave to adults on a secret location, somewhere in Assen. The perpetrators know the family has reported the abductions and rapes to the bureau jouth- and vicematter of the police in Drenthe. That is the reason the perpetrators are now turning the families lives into a nightmare. The family is being harassed repeadetly, even though the police...

Investigators talk of a 'new generation' who adopted radical views in Europe BRUSSELS After 12 months of intensive investigations into terrorist networks in Europe, the police are increasingly focusing on the North African diaspora as a recruitment pool for terrorist groups. Young men from Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria have been involved in a series of incidents in the last year, among them alleged plots to attack the U.S. embassies in Paris and Rome and the deadly bombing of a synagogue in Tunisia in April. That members of the North African diaspora are involved in terrorism in Europe is nothing new....