According to a recent inquiry ordered by a Belgian parliamentary commission, Brussels has become a major recruiting base for al-Qa’eda and a launch-pad for terrorist attacks on neighboring countries. The commission investigated the failure of the Sûreté de l’Etat, the Belgian secret service, to screen Islamic terrorists.

On 5 June, Mrs Godelieve Timmermans, the head of the Sûreté, resigned after the report concluded that the Sûreté had remained passive because it had found no indications that the terrorists would attack Belgian targets, and also because the Sûreté did not want to discredit certain corrupt Belgian authorities or politicians for fear that these might attribute to the secret service ‘a racist or xenophobic attitude toward immigrants or Muslims’.

The inquiry of the Belgian parliamentary commission into the Sûreté de l’ Etat revealed that it had allowed the Belgian Muslim community – numbering over 350,000 members to become heavily infiltrated by fundamentalist extremists. Thirty of Belgium’s 300 mosques, the report says, are run by fundamentalist clerics. Candidates for the jihad are being recruited among Muslims in schools, prisons, hospitals and sports centers.

The report warns that the fundamentalist Muslims are creating a religious state within the Belgian state. The biggest mosque in Belgium, the Great Mosque of Brussels, built in the Cinquantenaire Park with Saudi money operates its own ‘Islamic police’, supervising certain Brussels neighborhoods with a large concentration of Muslims. It even organizes paramilitary training. The report refers to sermons at the Great Mosque calling Brussels the capital of the infidels’, rejoicing in the attacks of 11 September, openly supporting Osama bin Laden, and admonishing the faithful to prepare for the jihad.

Godelieve Timmermans indicated that the Sûreté de l’Etat was powerless to do anything about the spread of Islamic fundamentalism. The report admits that the Sûreté has been understaffed for over a decade, that it does not receive adequate funding, and that many retiring officers are not being replaced. Even after 11 September, the Belgian government refused to allow the Sûreté to fill up vacant positions. As Charles Pasqua said six years ago, Brussels seems to lack the resolve to fight international Islamic terrorism.

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