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An undated picture released on February 26, 2008 by Al Salam newspaper shows Belgian-Moroccan Abdelkader Belliraj who had allegedly committed six murders in Belgium between 1986 and 1989, including the assassination of a Jewish leader and of the head of the Brussels mosque.
Photo: AFP Copyright 2008
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BRUSSELS (EJP)---The alleged head of an Islamist terrorist network dismantled this week by the Moroccan authorities is suspected for the assassination in 1989 of the president of Belgian Jewish community representative body and two Muslim leaders, press reports said Thursday.
Morocco’s Interior Minister Chakib Benmoussa announced on Wednesday that the Al-Qaeda linked group broken up this week planned to assassinate government officials and members of the Jewish community in Morocco, and had carried out crimes internationally.
The minister said that the man considered to be the head of the terrorist network, Abdelkader Belliraj, had allegedly committed six murders in Belgium between 1986 and 1989 “which had not been elucidated yet.”
The minister reportedly cited the assassination of Joseph Wybran, on 3 October 1989 in the parking of Erasme Hospital in Brussels where he was working as head of the immunology department. The 49-year-old Wybran was then president of CCOJB, the umbrella group of Jewish organizations in Belgium.
This murder, which has never been elucidated, was at the time attributed to Palestinian terrorist group Abu Nidal.
The minister said Belliraj, who has dual Moroccan and Belgian citizenship, also assassinated two Muslim leaders in Brussels in 1899 because they had opposed a fatwa or religious edict issued by Iran against Indian-British author Salman Rushdie, author of "The Satanic Verses."
A Belgian judiciary source confirmed press reports that the information was transmitted by the Moroccan authorities. Belgian federal prosecutor, Johan Delmulle, said an inquiry has been opened, without giving more details.
Interior Minister Chakib Benmoussa's comments came as Moroccan authorities banned a small Islamist party over its alleged ties to the Al-Qaeda linked group.
It also had links with an organisation called the Moroccan Islamic Combattant Group (GICM) and the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat in Algeria, which has become Al-Qaeda's North African branch, the minister said.
According to Benmoussa, the network had contacts with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in 2001.
"The Belliraj terrorist network planned to carry out terrorist attacks with the help of firearms and explosives, and to assassinate high-profile Moroccan figures," he said.
It also sought to organise training in cooperation with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2005, Benmoussa said, and some members of the network had access to training in manufacturing explosives.
Three Moroccans resident in Belgium, including Belliraj, are among those indicted.
