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Belgium detains al-Qaeda suspects Belgium detains al-Qaeda suspects
(about 19 hours later)
Belgian police say they have detained 14 people suspected of being members of the al-Qaeda network. Police in Belgium say they have arrested 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 believed one of those held was planning to carry out a suicide attack.
Federal prosecutor Johan Delmulle said police did not know where the suspected suicide attack was to have targeted. The suspect had been given the go-ahead for the attack and had already said good-bye to his family, he added.
The detentions came as a two-day European Union leaders' summit was due to start in the Belgian capital, Brussels, on Thursday afternoon. Correspondents say the authorities appear to have been prompted to act immediately as EU leaders were holding an end-of-year meeting in Brussels.
A total of 242 police officers carried out 16 raids in Brussels and one in the eastern city of Liege, officials said. Security remains tight around the two-day summit in the capital, but Belgian police say it is no tighter than usual for such a gathering.
Police seized computers, data storage equipment and a pistol during the raids, reports say, and the men and women arrested are due to appear before anti-terrorism judges later. "It is clear that we have to take the terror threat seriously," Prime Minister Yves Leterme said as he entered the summit on Thursday.
'No choice''No choice'
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".Police do not know if the EU summit was to be the target of an attack Nearly 250 police officers carried out 16 raids overnight in Brussels and the eastern city of Liege, arrested a total of 14 men and women believed to be linked to al-Qaeda, officials said on Thursday.
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", Mr Delmulle quoted investigators as saying. Some had recently returned from Pakistan and Afghanistan and at least one might have been planning a suicide attack having talked of recording what was believed to be a martyrdom video, the authorities said. Computers and data storage equipment were also seized.
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 Federal Prosecutor Johan Delmulle
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".
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", the federal prosecutor quoted investigators as saying.
"He had said goodbye to his loved ones, because he wanted to enter paradise with a clear conscience," he added."He had said goodbye to his loved ones, because he wanted to enter paradise with a clear conscience," he added.
"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.""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."
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. Mr Delmulle said the raids were linked to a similar sweep last December, when 14 people were arrested by Belgian police on suspicion of planning to free a convicted al-Qaeda member, Nizar Trabelsi, but were subsequently released without charge.
The BBC's Jonny Dymond in Brussels says the investigation that led to the detentions appears to have been at least a year old. He said an investigation had shown at the time that "a group of people were in Brussels with the task of committing an attack".
Last December, 14 people arrested by Belgian police on suspicion of plotting to free a convicted al-Qaeda member were released without charge. "It is now clear to all that we were dealing with a real risk," Belgium's justice and interior ministers later said in a statement.
"It is more than likely that an attack in Brussels has been prevented."
Security services suspect Trabelsi, a 37-year-old Tunisian sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2003 for plotting to bomb a Belgian air base two years earlier, has links with Islamist militants across Europe.
Officials have not released the names of all the people arrested on Thursday, but Belgian media are reporting that they include Malika El Aroud, a Moroccan-born Belgian online writer who was accused by a judge in 2003 of having "utterly extremist ideas".
Ms El Aroud's first husband, Abdessatar Dahmane, died in the suicide bombing in Afghanistan in September 2001 that killed the leader of the anti-Taleban Northern Alliance, Ahmed Shah Massoud.