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How a Town Became a Terror Hub
The town of Maaseik is home to about 800 people of Moroccan origin. There is a new mosque in the town, but little overt history of Islamic radicalism.
(By Roger Ulburghs For The Washington Post)
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About 800 people of Moroccan origin live in the town, many of them the children and grandchildren of immigrants. There is a new mosque in the center of town, but little overt history of Islamic radicalism.
That began to change after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. A handful of men from Maaseik's Moroccan community started wearing long beards after returning from lengthy trips abroad. Some had been to Afghanistan, where burqas are commonly viewed as appropriate dress for devout Muslim women.
Rumors that radicals were living in Maaseik spread to the offices of the Belgian State Security agency in Brussels, which opened a surveillance operation in the summer of 2002.
At first, intelligence officials suspected the Maaseik group was a ring to smuggle illegal farmworkers into Limburg. The agents dubbed their mission Operation Asparagus, after the vegetable that is widely grown in the region. As months passed, concerns grew.
In November 2003, several key figures in the GICM traveled to Maaseik from Spain and France for a rare meeting, according to Spanish and French court documents.
The GICM's European cells normally avoided direct contact with each other so that they wouldn't attract attention from police. But the network had seen several of its leaders arrested in Morocco after terrorist bombings in Casablanca six months earlier and was trying to regroup, the court documents show. Maaseik was emerging as an important hub.
Among those attending the meeting was Lahoussine Haski, a Moroccan with a history of fighting for radical Islamic causes in Chechnya, Afghanistan and other places, according to Belgian investigators and court documents.
Haski arrived in Maaseik holding a false passport, on the run from authorities in Morocco who had issued a warrant for his arrest on terrorism charges. In Saudi Arabia, he was listed by the government as one of the 26 most-wanted terrorist suspects in the kingdom for his alleged role in a series of bombings.
After months of hiding out in Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey, Haski needed a refuge. Maaseik seemed safe. He married a local woman. Later, she would become one of the half-dozen women who caused a ruckus in town by donning their black burqas.
'United in Jihad'
The GICM was founded in 1997 by Moroccan veterans of the jihad training camps in Afghanistan. Its goal: to take the fight back to Morocco, overthrow the monarchy and establish an Islamic republic, according to Moroccan and European counterterrorism officials.
After the U.S.-led overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, the Moroccans scattered. Many returned to their homeland. Others traveled to Europe, where they blended into the continent's fast-growing Moroccan immigrant communities.
On May 16, 2003, a dozen suicide bombers recruited by the GICM detonated explosives at several targets in the port city of Casablanca, killing themselves and 33 other people. Less than a year later, the GICM struck again -- this time in Madrid, carrying out the first major terrorist attack in Europe since the Sept. 11 hijackings.
