In 2001, a network of interconnected terrorist cells in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands was uncovered by law enforcement. The network had connections to al-Qaeda and was planning to commit one or more bombings.
Plot
Three cells were involved: one in Rotterdam, one in Brussels, and one in a suburb of Paris. According to Djamel Beghal, a French-Algerian national arrested for attempting to enter France with a fake passport, Nizar Trabelsi planned to strap a bomb onto himself, cover it up with a business suit, and then detonate the bomb along with himself in the U.S. Embassy in Paris. Trabelsi denied this, but admitted that he had planned to commit a suicide bombing by detonating a car bomb next to the canteen at Kleine Brogel Air Base in Belgium. During interrogation, Beghal said that there was a plan to attack the U.S. Embassy in Paris and told investigators of terrorist cells in Rotterdam and Paris. Two of them, Jérôme Courtailler and Abdelghani Rabia, were convicted in absentia of belonging to a terrorist organization by an appellate court on 21 June 2004, and Courtailler turned himself in on 24 June.
Nizar Trabelsi was sentenced to ten years in prison by a Belgian court on 30 September 2003 for the attempted destruction of public property, illegal arms possession, and membership in a private militia, reflecting Belgium's lack of specific anti-terrorism laws at the time. It was the largest terrorism trial the country had held up to that point; Trabelsi was extradited to the United States in 2013.
Six men were convicted of criminal association in relation with a terrorist enterprise by a French court on 15 March 2005; Djamel Beghal and Kamel Daoudi were sentenced to ten and nine years in prison, respectively, and the other four received sentences ranging from one to six years in prison. Beghal was released in 2010. Daoudi was released from prison in 2008, whereupon he was to be deported to Algeria. However, the European Court of Human Rights blocked the order, and he was instead placed under house arrest.