Belgium: Terror report

In a new report of the Comité I, the Belgian state security service estimates the total number of Muslim extremists in Belgium at "maximum 2%".  With 403,000 Muslims, this comes up to 8,000 people.  Comité I is a permanent parliamentary committee established to follow up on the activities of the security services.

According to the report three attacks by Muslims had been foiled.  An attack by Nizar Trabelsi on the NATO base at Kleine-Brogel and two attacks in 2004 in Antwerp, one on a Jewish school and one at the opening ceremony of the HST tunnel.

The federal attorney, Johan Delmulle, said in an interview Saturday to De Tijd that there is information about terrorist training camps in Belgium.

"Last year we received 318 report about possible terrorist activities in our country.  We treat each report as if there is really an attack involved.  The error margin must be zero." according to Delmulle.  There is information about terrorist training camps, "but I can't say more than that".

Delmulle also said that the federal prosecutor started up a record number of terror investigations in 2006, with 106 new files compared to 89 in 2005 and 134 in the last three years.

The number of judicial investigations also went up: 26 in 2006 compared to 14 in the year before.  In Brussels itself there were 17 investigations, followed by Antwerp and Charleroi with 3 each.

Source: GVA (Dutch)

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