BRUSSELS, Belgium — Federal prosecutors said Tuesday that 11 suspects have been detained in an anti-terror sweep in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.
Those targeted in the sweeps were suspected of planning a possible attack in Belgium or of involvement in recruiting for a purported Chechen terror organization, Belgian officials said. Seven were detained in Belgium’s port city of Antwerp, three in Amsterdam and one near the German border city of Aachen.
The arrests were not linked to the recent reports of possible terrorist attacks in Germany, said Judith Sluiter, a spokesman for the Dutch National Coordinator for Counterterrorism.
In a second spate of 17house searches in and around Brussels, “several people” were interrogated in an unrelated investigation into a purported terror group seeking funds and recruits to go fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Leen Nuyts, spokesman for the Belgian prosecutor’s office.
She refused to be more specific about the number of detentions but insisted the second case had nothing to do with a potential terror attack plot.
In the first sweep, 10 homes were searched in the three nations Tuesday morning, and 11 suspects of Belgian, Dutch, Moroccan or Russian nationality were detained, all men in their 20s or 30s, Nuyts said. Initially there were indications one woman was among them.
They follow arrests in Spain, Morocco and Saudi Arabia, related to the investigation earlier this year.
The Belgian prosecutors said “there was talk of plans for an attack in Belgium by an international jihadist organization” that uses the website Ansar al Mujahideen. The place of the purported attack had not been specified.
The police also targeted “the recruiters, candidate jihadists and financing” for the Caucasus Emirate, which groups insurgents who seek to establish an Islamic emirate in Russia’s North Caucasus region of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia. Its leader is Chechen rebel Doku Umarov.
In Antwerp, Mohammed Hamdaoui, the brother of two purported radicals who were detained Tuesday, denied they could be linked to terror activities.
“They go nowhere, they haven’t been on a big trip, not even to Morocco,” he said.
Germany’s Federal Criminal Police confirmed the arrest of a 31-year-old man who was sought on an EU warrant in connection with recruiting young men in Belgium to fight in Chechnya.
In a statement, Dutch prosecutors said they had detained three men ages 25, 26 and 28 in Amsterdam at the request of Belgian authorities over accusations of involvement in international terrorism.
The Dutch national prosecutor’s office said Austria was also involved in the action.
Dutch authorities said Belgium had asked for the extradition of the three suspects arrested in Amsterdam.
Information for this article was contributed from The Hague by Mike Corder, from Moscow by Jim Heintz and from Berlin by Melissa Eddy of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 8 on 11/24/2010