Belgium detains al-Qaeda suspects

Belgium detains al-Qaeda suspects


http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/image...02826f157f.jpg Police do not know if the EU summit was to be the target of an attack


Belgian police say they have detained 14 people suspected of being members of the al-Qaeda network.
They include a man believed to have been about to launch a suicide attack, officials said.
Federal prosecutor Johan Delmulle said police did not know where the suspected suicide attack was to have targeted.
The detentions come as a two-day European Union leaders' summit was due to start in the Belgian capital, Brussels, on Thursday afternoon.
A total of 242 police officers carried out 16 raids in Brussels and one in the eastern city of Liege, officials said.
Mr Delmulle said the suspects could have been targeting Pakistan or Afghanistan, "but it can't be ruled out that Belgium or Europe could have been the target".
'No choice'
The man suspected of planning the suicide attack had "received the green light to carry out an operation from which he was not expected to come back" and "had said goodbye to his loved ones, because he wanted to enter paradise with a clear conscience," Mr Delmulle quoted investigators as saying.
"This information, linked to the fact that the EU summit is being held in Belgium at the moment, left us with no choice but to intervene today," he added. The police investigation, described as the most important anti-terror inquiry in Belgium, targeted an alleged group of Belgian Islamists believed to have been trained in the Afghanistan and Pakistan region, officials said, according to the AFP agency. The BBC's Jonny Dymond, in Brussels, says the investigation that led to the detentions appears to have been at least a year old




http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7777312.stm