Homeland Security

Former footballer sentenced in Belgium for planning attack against US base

IRNA

Brussels, Sept 30, IRNA -- Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian and former 
football player in Germany, was given a 10-year jail sentence by a 
court in Brussels Tuesday afternoon for planning an attack on an 
American military base in the Belgian city of Limburg. 
The base is thought to house tactical nuclear missiles. 
Trabelsi was just one of 23 defendants standing trial before 
Brussels magistrates on terrorism charges. 
Several defendants received five or six year sentences, local 
radio RVI reported. 
The magistrate said that the network in which Trabelsi was active 
formed a breeding ground for fundamentalism. 
Other suspects are believed to have been involved in the killing 
of Afghan leader Ahmad Shah Massood. 
Trabelsi, who was arrested in Brussels two days after the 
September 11, 2001 attacks in the US, reportedly had met al-Qaeda 
leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. 
NK/AH/210 
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