A prosecutor in the city of Antwerp demanded a 15-year prison term for Fouad Belkacem, the leader of the Islamist group Sharia4Belgium which is suspected of brainwashing youngsters and shipping them off to fight in Syria.
A further 46 members of the group were charged with membership in a terror organization in the Belgium’s biggest-ever terrorism trial. However, only eight of them were present for the trial’s opening, and a ninth appeared after the lunch break. Many others are believed to be fighting in Syria or to have died in the country’s civil war. The Salafist cell has been active since 2010 in several Belgian cities, especially in Antwerp and in the Brussels region.
The prosecutor cited parents of some of the young Belgian jihadists as saying their children would never have thought of fighting overseas if they had not been brainwashed by Sharia4Belgium. As the hearing closed, one mother, whose son is a suspected Sharia4 Belgium member believed to be in Syria, was led from the court after pointing at the suspects and screaming: “You have made my life a living hell!”
Prosecutors said the group was led by 32-year-old Fouad Belkacem. While Belkacem did not fight in Syria, unlike most other defendants, prosecutors said he was the main driver behind the organization. “Belkacem's words can only be interpreted as a call to violence and jihad,” public prosecutor Ann Fransen said, listing a long line of speeches and videos in which he equaled military jihad to praying and fasting. Belkacem is currently serving a jail term for inciting hatred against non-Muslims.
Prosecutors also detailed how Sharia4Belgium members approached young men, and a few teenage women, on the streets of Antwerp and Vilvoorde, north of Brussels, to invite them to their center in Antwerp where they were indoctrinated and readied for their trip to Syria. “The clear aim was to prepare them for armed combat,” substitute prosecutor Luc Festraets said. Once in Syria, the recruits joined organizations such as the Al Qaeda inspired Jabhat al-Nusra and organizations which later morphed into Islamic State, prosecutors said.
The court case in Antwerp comes some four months after a gunman killed four people in a shooting at the Jewish museum in Brussels. Authorities say the suspect in that case, French national Mehdi Nemmouche, spent most of 2013 fighting in Syria.
