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| Europe |
| Belgians bust arms dealer stash |
| 2005-06-17 |
| Belgian police on Friday said they have seized a huge arsenal of weapons, including rocket launchers, hidden in a garage and are investigating whether arms were sold to terrorists or organised crime rings. The owner of the garage, a Belgian man with military background, is on the run. No one has been arrested in connection with the cache, found on Wednesday in a town near Brussels. "He's a big dealer," the head of the Belgian judicial police, Glenn Audenaert, told reporters. "To my knowledge, this is the biggest arsenal we have ever seized." Police found a ton of ammunition, a ton of spare parts and dozens of machine guns, rifles and pistols, as well as eight detonators. Much of the weaponry was illegally smuggled into Belgium from the United States and eastern Europe in the form of spare parts and assembled by the dealer, police said. Audenaert said there was a clear danger such arms dealers could have links with extremist groups, although police have not found any evidence so far in this case. But some of the weapons in the stash were the same type found at the time of the arrest of Tunisian-born former professional soccer player Nizar ben Abdelaziz Trabelsi, who was convicted in 2003 for plotting to blow up a military base in Belgium on behalf of al-Qaeda. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 Assembled from spare parts 'eh? Credit for get up and go. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-06-17 11:07 |