New Delhi: Belgian Police has detained 14 people for plotting to free a jailed Tunisian Al-Qaeda sympathiser.
The police also seized arms and explosives intended to be used in freeing the prisoner. The 37-year-old prisoner Nizar Trabelsi was sentenced to 10 years in 2003 for plotting an attack on a US Air Force base in Belgium.
Security was heightened at airports, subway stations and other public places across the capital, and the US Embassy issued a warning to Americans that "there is currently a heightened risk of terrorist attack in Brussels" although it had no indication of any American targets.
According to the US-based military affairs think tank GlobalSecurity.org, the Kleine Brogel Air Base is home to Belgian F-16 warplanes equipped with nuclear weapons that are under US control
Details about the identity of the suspects have not been released. Terror experts believe the detainees could be part of a terror cell operating in Europe.
With Christmas round the corner, security has been beefed up at all airports, railway stations and markets in the Belgian capital Brussels.
With Agency inputs
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