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No Brussels Fireworks Amid Terror Threat Published: 12/30/07, 10:05 AM EDT BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - Traditional New Year's Eve fireworks in central Brussels have been canceled due to a continuing terror threat in the Belgian capital, officials said Sunday. The popular downtown Christmas market will close early, at 6 p.m., on Dec. 31 rather than staying open all night, and the adjacent skating rink will shut at 8 p.m. Authorities warned of an increased risk of attack after police last week detained 14 people suspected of plotting to help an accused al-Qaida militant break out of jail. The inmate, Nizar...

BRUSSELS, Belgium - Belgian authorities on Saturday released 14 suspects detained over an alleged plot to free an al-Qaida prisoner after a court decided there was insufficient evidence to hold them for more than 24 hours, the Federal Prosecutor's office said. ADVERTISEMENT The government's Crisis Center said the investigation was not over. And Lieve Pellens, spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office, said tightened anti-terrorism measures triggered by the arrest of the suspected Islamic militants on Friday would remain in place over the holidays. "We think there is still a threat," Pellens said in a telephone interview. Police picked up the 14...

Fourteen people arrested in Belgium on suspicion of plotting to free a convicted al-Qaeda member from jail have been released without charge. The suspects were released for lack of evidence after 24 hours in custody. They were suspected of plotting to free Tunisian national Nizar Trabelsi, jailed in Belgium in 2003 for planning to attack US targets. In spite of the releases, the interior ministry said heightened security measures would remain in place. The federal prosecutor's office said searches at suspects' homes had yielded no explosives, weapons or other evidence to persuade the court to keep them in jail. "According...

Belgium arrests 14 in terrorist plot By RAF CASERT, Associated Press Writer BRUSSELS, Belgium - Belgian police Friday arrested 14 Muslim extremists suspected of planning the jailbreak of an al-Qaida prisoner convicted of plotting a terrorist attack on U.S. air base personnel, officials said. Extra police were deployed across the capital at airports, subway stations and other public places. The U.S. Embassy warned Americans of "a heightened risk of terrorist attack in Brussels," although it had no indication of any American targets. Police arrested the 14 in all-night raids across the country and discovered arms and explosives apparently intended for...

Belgium foils al-Qaeda jailbreak Trabelsi said he had met Bin Laden Fourteen people have been arrested in Belgium after authorities foiled a plot to free an al-Qaeda member arrested in September 2001, officials say.The suspects, detained in police raids, were described as Islamic militants. They were seeking to free Tunisian Nizar Trabelsi, jailed in Belgium for planning to attack US targets. An official said the plot involved explosives and that security was being stepped up in the capital over fears of a "possible attack". Belgium hosts the main European Union institutions and Nato headquarters, as well as a raft...

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...

An al-Qa'eda terrorist has confessed that he planned to drive a giant explosive device into a United States air force bunker in Belgium believed to contain nuclear warheads. News of the plot came as America gave warning that a broadcast thought to contain the words of Osama bin Laden foreshadowed a likely attack. The FBI said national landmarks, the aviation, oil and nuclear industries were possible targets. In an interview with a Belgian radio station, Nizar Trabelsi, 31, a Tunisian former professional footballer, said he had hoped to attack the Kleine Brogel base in eastern Belgium with a bomb similar...

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 assassination of 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...

A former professional footballer has been found guilty of planning to attack a Nato air base in Belgium. Nizar ben Abdelaziz Trabelsi, 33, a member of al-Qa'eda, had planned a suicide bomb attack on the Kleine Brogel air base, used by the United States Army and rumoured to house nuclear weapons. The court in Brussels heard that Trabelsi had met Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Trabelsi is a former member of German football team Fortuna Duesseldorf. He was detained in Brussels shortly after the attack on the World Trade Centre, and is one of 23 alleged members of al-Qa'eda on...

An alleged Islamic militant has told a Belgian court how he plotted to bomb a military base on an al-Qaeda mission. Nizar Trabelsi, a former Tunisian professional footballer, told how Osama Bin Laden's network sent him two years ago to Belgium to bomb the Kleine Brogel base, which houses nuclear missiles. He is one of 23 alleged Islamic militants on trial. Only eight of them are in custody, while five are still on the run and the others face lesser charges. "I was supposed to go alone in a van. The bomb was behind me," Mr Trabelsi told the Brussels...

Terrorist planned attack on nuclear warhead stockpile By Philip Delves Broughton November 17 2002 The Sun-Herald An Al Qaeda terrorist has confessed that he planned to drive a giant explosive device into a United States air force bunker in Belgium believed to contain nuclear warheads. News of the plot came as the US warned that a broadcast thought to contain the words of Osama bin Laden foreshadowed a likely attack. The FBI said national landmarks and the aviation, oil and nuclear industries were all possible targets. In an interview with a Belgian radio station, Tunisian Nizar Trabelsi, 31, a former...

Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion. Prosecutor asks for 3 more months to complete terrorist probe Associated Press Worldstream ANTHONY DEUTSCH; Associated Press Writer September 2, 2002 Monday 10:43 AM Eastern Time ROTTERDAM, Netherlands The public prosecutor on Monday asked for three more months to complete his case against four men accused of plotting terrorist attacks against U.S. targets in France and Belgium. Prosecutors say that in addition to the Paris embassy, the group targeted the Kleine-Brogel base in northeast Belgium, where around 100 U.S. Air Force personnel are...

The chemicals were stored in vats in the basement of an Egyptian restaurant in downtown Brussels. The suicide bomber, a former soccer player who had fallen into drug use and petty crime, had been selected. The target, the American Embassy in Paris, had been scouted. All that remained was the signal from Osama bin Laden's operatives in Afghanistan to strike. The nod was to come from a Frenchman of Algerian origin who was on his way back from training in Afghanistan. But he was arrested in transit, and he talked, spilling to French interrogators details of what could have been ...

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — A suspect wanted in a plot to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Paris has been extradited from Canada and ordered held in a Dutch jail for investigation, prosecutors said Friday. The Algerian-born suspect, identified in court documents as Amine Mezbar, 34, was transferred to the Netherlands Thursday evening and brought before a judicial commission Friday in Rotterdam, where two other suspects in the case also are being held. No trial date has been set, said Marjan van Kempen of the public prosecutor's office. In the normal judicial process, the judicial commission's task is to affirm...

LONDON (AP) The man accused of trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives hidden in his sneakers was seen in London with suspected members of the al-Qaida terrorist network, a British newspaper reported Saturday. A worshipper at London's Finsbury Park mosque, Rashid Hussain, was quoted by The Times as saying he saw Richard C. Reid at the mosque in 1998 with Djamel Beghal and Nizar Trabelsi. Beghal is a French-Algerian who French investigators say revealed a suicide plot to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Paris and apparently told Dubai investigators he had visited Osama bin Laden's home. ...