A few miles from the Dutch and German borders lies the Belgian town of Maaseik. Normally a quiet place, Maaseik erupted into panic last year when a women dressed in a burga covering her eyes appeared at a school and “scared children to tears.” After calm was restored, a displeased Mayor Jan Creemers summoned the woman and five others identically clad to his office.
The rest of the story, according to the Washington Post, goes like this:
“I said, ‘Ladies, you can be dressed all in Armani black for all I care, but please do not cover your faces,’ ” Creemers recalled. “I tried to talk to them about it, but it was impossible. They said, ‘We are the only true believers of the Koran.’ “
What the city elders did not know at the time was that the women came from households in which several men had embraced radical Islam and joined a terrorist network that was setting up sleeper cells across Europe, according to Belgian federal prosecutors and court documents from Italy, Spain and France.
Over the next nine months, Belgian federal police arrested five men in Maaseik . . . Each was charged with membership in a terrorist organization, the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, a fast-growing network known by its French initials, GICM.
With each arrest, investigators uncovered fresh evidence that placed small-town Maaseik at the center of a terrorist network stretching across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. The town had served as a haven for suspects in the Madrid train explosions that killed 191 people in March 2004, for instance, as well as an important meeting place for the GICM’s European leadership.
[ . . . ]In Brussels, 13 people, including a group from Maaseik, appeared in court this month on charges of belonging to a terrorist organization and providing logistical support to the Moroccan network.
Despite an investigation that has reached into eight countries, Belgian authorities remain uncertain about the Maaseik cell’s true mission . Police found no bombs, no guns, no blueprints for an attack—just lots of worrisome evidence that the defendants were consorting with terrorism suspects from elsewhere and could have been planning something big.
“We are quite sure that we have proved that they were a logistical support cell,” said a senior official with the Belgian State Security service, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “But the fact is, the potential was there to do something more serious.”
