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A KEY al-Qaeda operative responsible for recruiting the shoe bomber Richard Reid and one of the September 11 hijackers helped to kidnap five British children from their Norwich home and take them to Libya, a court was told yesterday. Djamel Beghal, 39, is serving ten years in a French prison for plotting a suicide attack on the US Embassy in Paris and was described as so dangerous that even other al-Qaeda members thought him beyond the pale. While he was living in Leicester in the late 1990s Beghal, an Algerian, met Azzedin Journazi, from Libya, at a city mosque and...

PARIS Six men suspected of a role in a foiled 2001 plot to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Paris will stand trial on terrorism-related charges, judicial officials said Monday. The men are charged with ‘‘criminal association with a terrorist enterprise,’’ which carries up to 10 years in prison, the officials said on customary condition of anonymity. Two are also accused of violating French immigration laws. France’s top anti-terrorist judges Jean-Louis Bruguiere and Jean-Francois Ricard have investigated the suspects for nearly three years. The trial could begin in early 2005, the officials said. Among the suspects is French-Algerian Djamel Beghal, an...

BRUSSELS, Belgium Sept. 30 A former pro soccer player who joined the al-Qaida terrorist network was convicted and sentenced to prison Tuesday for plotting to bomb a NATO base believed to contain nuclear weapons. Nizar Trabelsi of Tunisia, who once played professional soccer in Germany, received the maximum sentence of 10 years in prison from a court that also convicted 17 other men and acquitted five others in the largest terrorism trial in Belgium's history. Trabelsi admitted planning to drive a car bomb into the canteen of the Kleine Brogel air base, a Belgian military post used by NATO where...

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- A former professional soccer player who joined al-Qaida was convicted Tuesday of plotting to blow up a U.S. military base believed to contain nuclear weapons in the first verdict in a trial of nearly two dozen alleged militants. Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian who once played soccer in Germany, was given the maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. He had admitted planning to drive a car bomb into the canteen of the Kleine Brogel air base, where 100 U.S. military personnel work. Another Tunisian-born suspect, Tarek Maaroufi, was sentenced to six years for his involvement in...

The trial has begun in Brussels of 23 alleged Islamic terrorists. The accused are believed to have ties to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and are charged with planning attacks on US targets in Europe. A number of them are also charged with involvement in the murder of Afghan leader Ahmed Shah Masood. He led the Northern Alliance in its fight against the Taliban and was assassinated shortly after the September 11th attacks. The key suspect in the Brussels trial is former Tunisian footballer Nizar Trabelsi. He has admitted planning an attack on a US military airbase in Belgium. The...

BRUSSELS: A Tunisian former professional soccer player suspected of planning bombing attacks on US targets in Europe will stand trial May 22 along with 11 alleged accomplices, a Belgian court ruled Monday. Nizar Trabelsi faces charges including attempting to destroy property by explosion, possession of illegal arms and membership of a private militia. He is suspected of involvement in plots to blow up the American embassy in Paris and a Belgian air force base where about 100 US military personnel are stationed. Full details of the case against him and the other defendants were not immediately released. Belgian media reported...

Nizar Trabelsi acknowledges to have prepared an attack in connection with Ben Laden Thursday November 14, 2002 - 19h10 GMT BRUSSELS, Nov. 14 (AFP) - Nizar Trabelsi, a terrorist supposed stopped in Brussels on September 13, 2001, recognized that it had prepared an attack against an American base of NATO in Belgium in connection with network Al-Qaïda of Oussama Ben Laden, in a diffused exclusive interview Thursday evening by public radio-télévision Belgian RTBF. The RTBF indicated to have collected "at the time of long telephone conversations" the "confessions" of Trabelsi, which is held with the prison of Brussels of...