Belgians convinced Zaoui involved with terrorists

By CATHERINE FIELD

BRUSSELS - Belgian officials who probed and prosecuted Ahmed Zaoui say they are convinced he provided support for North African terrorists and dismiss allegations by the Refugee Status Appeals Authority (RSAA) that his trial in Brussels was skewed.

In interviews with the Herald, these sources - like their counterparts in France, where Zaoui was also convicted - portray the Islamic cleric as a dark, enigmatic character who they suspect gave terrorists logistical, financial and moral help.

Mr Zaoui is painted as a facilitator of this network, not as someone who ordered or who was directly implicated in any act of violence.

He was found guilty by a Brussels Appeal Court in 1995 of being the instigator or the head of a criminal organisation and for possession of false passports.

He was handed a four-year suspended term.

"My feeling then and now, after other cases, was that he was part of a network making it possible for terrorist fighters elsewhere, outside Europe, to make their actions possible," a senior source at the Belgian Justice Department said.

"It's like drug traffickers, the big fish always say 'we don't take any drugs'," the source said.

"[Zaoui] says, of course he didn't carry out attacks. Of course, he probably didn't manipulate any grenades ... That is typical, really typical."

Belgium's concerns about Mr Zaoui reflect those in France, where action was similarly directed at choking off suspected supply lines to the men of blood.

"The bottom line is that you have to attack the problem where it's originating, and giving financial, logistical, religious support for the people on the front line is crucial.

"If you cut it down you are giving the right signals," the source said.

This individual spoke on condition of anonymity, citing a series of written and verbal threats received before and since the trial.

Mr Zaoui's supporters say this picture is not only inaccurate but slanderous.

They say he has never wavered from peaceful activism, and that the evidence against him in Europe was piecemeal and biased.

Prosecutors failed to assemble any proof that he participated in terrorism and this reflected in the comparatively light sentence of a suspended term.

Even so, one of Mr Zaoui's defence lawyers in Belgium, Gilles Vanderbeck, acknowledged that his client never shrugged off the taint of suspicion that he had been dabbling in terrorist waters.

At the time of events, Mr Zaoui was the organiser in Europe for the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), a party that is campaigning for non-violent change in Algeria. In the mid-1990s, the FIS was riven by dissent about how to overthrow Algeria's military junta. Frustrated by the failure of non-violence to achieve their goal, a radical fringe in the FIS set up the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which became one of the bloodiest terrorist groups of modern times, blamed for the slaughter of tens of thousands of Algerian civilians.

"We were on the borderline between committed political activity and underground terrorist activity," Vanderbeck said of Mr Zaoui's trial and subsequent appeal.

Twelve other North African Arabs were prosecuted in the same case, some of them for possession of guns, grenades, ammunition and violent Islamist literature.

"In that regard, he [Zaoui] remains a very unclear character in my view," Vanderbeck admitted.

"But in my opinion, there was significant doubt which rightly weighed in his favour in the first trial, although not on appeal. In any case, the decision to give him a suspended sentence clearly shows that obviously he was not considered a major [terrorist] leader."

Anne-Marie Lizin, a Socialist Party member of Belgium's upper house of Parliament, the Senate, who this month went to Algeria with a European team to monitor the presidential elections, contended Mr Zaoui faked or overstepped his role as FIS leader.

"He was an organiser although he always said he wasn't," Lizin said. "These leaders always look like sheep."

Criticism of the Belgian trial and appeal is the biggest argument presented by the RSAA in its 215-page report to justify giving Mr Zaoui refugee status in New Zealand.

The agency said the Belgian proceedings were so riddled with flaws that Mr Zaoui was not judged fairly.

The Belgian Foreign Ministry has sent a diplomatic letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to redress what it says are inaccuracies and misperceptions by the RSAA and to insist he got a fair trial. France has done the same.

A human rights watchdog told the Herald that judicial procedures in continental European countries may seem strange or uncomfortable for people familiar with the Anglo-Saxon system of common law, with its adversarial approach to test the evidence in the courtroom.

But that did not necessarily mean a defendant's rights had been violated.

"If you are looking at it from New Zealand, it's going to look very different. That doesn't necessarily mean it is in breach of human rights, but it may mean that it is not compatible" with New Zealand's tradition, said Susie Alegre, a British lawyer with Amnesty International's European office.

Herald Feature: Ahmed Zaoui, parliamentarian in prison

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