Brussels 'prison break' foiled
Friday, 21 Dec 2007 15:55
Security has been stepped up in Brussels
In Focus
Institutional reform of the European Union is in crisis once again after the Irish 'no' vote rejecting the Lisbon treaty last month. Full Story
Belgian police have heightened security after arresting 14 men suspected of plotting to free a convicted terrorist in Brussels.
Prosecutors said a police raid on a radical Islamist militant group unearthed the plot to spring Tunisian Nizar Trabelsi from jail.
"They were planning to use weapons and explosives to free him... these means could be employed for another use," spokesperson Lieve Pellens said.
She added the would-be rescuers were driven by an "extreme version of Islam".
Police patrols were quickly increased throughout the Belgian capital with security especially heightened at Brussels international airport, in shopping malls and on the mainline rail and metro networks.
"An attack could be being prepared," prime minister Guy Verhofstadt was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.
Trabelsi, a former professional football player in Germany, is serving a ten-year sentence in a Belgian prison for plotting an attack on a military airbase in Belgium believed to house US nuclear missiles.
He was arrested on September 13th 2001, two days after the al-Qaida terrorist attacks on targets in the US. Trabelsi admitted he wanted to kill US soldiers.