How Belgium Became a Jihadist-Recruiting Hub

[GBCW 397]

By MATTHEW DALTON and MARGARET COKER

Sept. 28, 2014 10:38 p.m. ET

Belgian authorities say roughly 300 Belgians—80 from Antwerp and nearby cities—have traveled to Syria, a disproportionate number for a country of 11 million. Many of them were members of Sharia4Belgium or have links to the group, the authorities say.

Sharia4Belgium, founded in Antwerp, gained members as one of its founders, Fouad Belkacem, wooed them through street preaching. Mr. Belkacem, 32, has a long criminal record including theft and assault, police say.

Mr. Belkacem drew recruits into meetings at a member's house, away from mosques where they would have been more easily monitored by Belgian security forces. Most members are of Moroccan descent, and a number had rap sheets before joining the group, Belgian authorities say.

Some "were young criminals; they dealt drugs," says Kris Luyckx, a lawyer for one of them who says he represented several of the group's older members 10 to 15 years ago when they were teenagers dabbling in criminal activities. "Then they grew beards and saw the light."

Sharia4Belgium started planning to send members to Syria in 2011, when Mr. Kasmi and Mr. Belkacem traveled to London to meet with Anjem Choudary, a radical Muslim cleric who was arrested on Thursday in London on suspicion of being a member of a banned U.K. extremist group. Mr. Choudary helped the group contact Omar Bakri Mohammed, another radical cleric formerly based in the U.K. who now lives in Lebanon, the Antwerp police official said. He was arrested by Lebanese authorities earlier this year on suspicion of supporting terrorism.

...

Mr. Kasmi traveled to Lebanon in November 2011 to meet with Mr. Bakri, Antwerp police say, who put him in touch with militant groups in Syria. Mr. Bakri couldn't be reached for comment.

Once in Syria, Sharia4Belgium's members mainly joined two groups, Nusra Front, which is al Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, and Majlis Shura al-Mujahideen, authorities say. Some members settled in a villa near Aleppo formerly owned by a senior member of Bashar al-Assad's regime, says Pieter Van Ostaeyen, an independent Belgian historian who researches foreign fighters from Belgium. They posted pictures of themselves on social media lounging by the pool.

"Those were the days when these guys were living an easy life," Mr. Van Ostaeyen says, "when they were beating Assad and all the groups in Syria were cooperating instead of fighting each other."

When it became clear in 2013 that dozens of Sharia4Belgium's members had left for Syria, Belgian police started arresting people they were tracking who tried to go to Syria, as well as any who returned.

Police this May arrested two women from Antwerp at Brussels' airport who were allegedly on their way to join Islamic State and a third believed to have helped them. They were part of a group of 40, mostly women, many with links to Sharia4Belgium, whom the police had identified as being at risk of going to Syria, the Antwerp police official says.

Police used wiretaps and interrogations, also following Sharia4Belgium activities on social media, to identify the 44 men and two women to be tried. They also relied on intelligence intercepts provided by the U.S. and other nations, the police official says.

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Belgian authorities say Sharia4Belgium's members didn't go to Syria to fight for democracy against the al-Assad regime but to establish an Islamic state, purged of non-Sunni Muslims.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/how-belgium-became-a-jihadist-recruiting-hub-1411958283

[Pooky 3,784]

Belgium is a very bad word ...

[Curmudgeon 227]

It is? I guess Belgium had to do something to be relevant in the modern world