Country Reports on Terrorism 2013 - Belgium

Overview: Belgium maintains an effective counterterrorism system, overseen by the Ministries of Interior and Justice. Belgium continued to investigate, arrest, and prosecute terrorist suspects and worked closely with U.S. authorities on counterterrorism matters.

Significant numbers of Belgian foreign fighters have travelled to Syria, and in response, the Belgian government formed a task force focused on countering radicalization, preventing prospective fighters from traveling to the region, monitoring returnees, and arresting and prosecuting recruiters, facilitators, and those returnees who represent a clear threat. Belgium has taken a lead role in in EU discussions on foreign fighters. A December study by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization estimated that Belgium had the highest per capita number of Syrian foreign fighters of any European country; Belgian government estimates ranged from 100 to more than 200.

Legislation, Law Enforcement, and Border Security: Belgian counterterrorism legislation was reinforced in 2003 to enable authorities to investigate and prosecute terrorist suspects more effectively. In February the Parliament passed a modification to the penal code that broadened the definition of incitement to terrorism, enabling authorities to investigate and prosecute individuals who advocate terrorist actions directly or indirectly. This has given authorities broader powers to investigate and prosecute those who call for the violent overthrow of democratic regimes, incite others to hatred of non-Muslims, and recruit fighters for armed conflict abroad.

The primary actors in Belgium's counterterrorism system are the Belgian Federal Police and its Counterterrorism Division, the Civilian and Military Intelligence Services, Office of the Federal Prosecutor, and the Crisis Unit. Their actions are coordinated and overseen by the inter-ministerial Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis (CUTA or OCAM/OCAD). The Ministry of Interior was in the process of overseeing a number of structural police reforms that, among other things, are designed to streamline information sharing on counterterrorism matters between jurisdictions and with other agencies.

Belgium has been working with other Schengen zone states and with Turkey to improve efforts to share information and interdict prospective foreign fighters en route to Syria. All new Belgian passports now contain biometric data.

Belgian police have made numerous arrests of individuals suspected of recruiting fighters to go to Syria, as well as returnees. Most returnees are connected to the radical Salafist group Sharia4Belgium, which formally disbanded in 2012, although its members remain active in Syria or as recruiters in Belgium. Some of the individuals arrested have been released on parole, subject to police monitoring, while others remained in detention at year's end, pending trial. The most significant arrests included:

• On April 16, police arrested four suspects charged with directing the efforts of Sharia4Belgium to recruit foreign fighters for Syria: Hakim and Abdelouafi Elouassaki, Walid Lakdim, and former Sharia4Belgium spokesman Fouad Belkacem, who had been arrested in 2012 and was serving a sentence via electronic monitoring. Hakim Elouassaki was arrested after returning from Syria, where he was wounded.

• On October 19, Jejoen Bontinck, a Belgian convert and foreign fighter who returned to Antwerp after spending eight months in Syria, was arrested and charged with participation in a terrorist group. He was released under conditions on December 13.

• On December 9, the Belgian Federal Police arrested five individuals suspected of recruiting foreign fighters to go to Syria. The leader of the group, Jean-Louis Denis, a Belgian convert and former member of Sharia4Belgium, allegedly radicalized and recruited people in the course of his charitable activities distributing food to the poor in Brussels.

Other important law enforcement activities included:

• On April 25, convicted terrorist Lors Doukaev, a Belgian resident of Chechen origin, was sent back to Belgium by Danish authorities to serve the remaining nine years of his sentence for terrorism. In 2010, Doukaev was arrested in Copenhagen after he accidentally set off the bomb he was preparing, allegedly to send to the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which published controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in 2005.

• On September 11, the Antwerp Court of Appeals re-opened the court case against the 14 members of the so-called Hamdaoui cell accused of planning terrorist attacks in Belgium and seeking to fight in Chechnya. Many are being tried in absentia; it is believed that some members of the cell are fighting in Syria. In 2012, a lower court had thrown out the charges against all but one of the suspects (the suspected leader, Hassan Hamdaoui, a Belgian of Moroccan origin), but prosecutors successfully appealed the ruling. On October 19, police arrested Hamdaoui, who turned himself in after having been convicted in absentia in 2012 of violating the terms of his parole.

• On September 24, Belgian Federal police arrested Ismail Abdelatif Allal in Vilvoorde pursuant to an international arrest warrant. Allal was wanted in Spain for his suspected leadership of the so-called Ceuta recruiting and financing cell, which is allegedly linked to al-Qa'ida.

• On October 8, Belgian police in Ghent arrested Maria Natividad Jauregui Espina, aka "Pepona," an alleged member of Basque Fatherland and Liberty's Vizcaya commando unit wanted under two arrest warrants for attacks in Spain.

• On October 3, Belgium extradited convicted terrorist Nizar Trabelsi to the United States. Trabelsi, a Tunisian national, was arrested in Belgium on September 13, 2001, and later convicted for plotting to attack the Belgian Air Force base at Kleine Brogel, where U.S. military personnel are stationed. He served a 10-year sentence in Belgium prior to his extradition.

Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Belgium is a member of the Financial Action Task Force. Belgium's financial intelligence unit, the Cellule de Traitement des Informations Financieres (CTIF) is a member of the Egmont Group. CTIF is tasked with tracking and investigating reports of financial crimes, including money laundering and terrorist financing, and has broad authorities under Belgian legislation to conduct inquiries and refer criminal cases to federal prosecutors. According to the most recent CTIF annual report – which covers 2012 – of the 1,506 financial crimes cases that CTIF referred to prosecutors, 20 (1.32 percent) were connected to possible terrorist or proliferation financing, a slight decrease from the previous year (1.63 percent). Of those 20, 17 were being investigated by police at year's end, and three were dismissed. For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, see the 2014 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume 2, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm.

Regional and International Cooperation: Belgium participates in EU, NATO, OSCE, and Council of Europe counterterrorism efforts, and is a member of the advisory board of the UN Counter-Terrorism Centre. In December 2013, Belgian Interior Minister Milquet hosted a ministerial meeting of EU member states affected by the foreign fighter problem, in an effort to develop additional areas of cooperation in border controls, radicalization prevention, and information sharing. (The United States participated in this meeting.)

As an EU member state, Belgium has contributed trainers and capacity-building expertise to EU counterterrorism assistance programs in Sahel countries, including the Collège Sahélien de Sécurité, and the Belgian Federal Police have provided training to counterparts in the Maghreb.

Countering Radicalization to Violence and Violent Extremism: In 2013, both the Ministry of the Interior and the Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis (OCAM) broadened their strategies to take into account the foreign fighter problem. The Interior Ministry plan contains measures to build community resilience against radicalization to violence, boost anti-discrimination and integration efforts, and counter prison radicalization. OCAM's "Action Plan Radicalism," which it coordinates, has been broadened to strengthen efforts to monitor the radicalization to violence and recruitment of young people to travel to Syria, and to develop measures to limit the impact of violent extremist messaging. OCAM and the Ministry of Interior coordinate and facilitate the flow of information between the national and the local level, including the dissemination of best practices and other measures that help to curb the activities of violent extremists.

Among the components of the government's strategy on preventing radicalization is an effort to counter violent extremist messaging on the internet. The government's strategy on preventing radicalization to violence also includes an interagency effort in support of local government actors who will work with returnees from Syria to monitor their reintegration into society and provide them with guidance and support.