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WEEKLY
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| Belgian police raid PKK offices |
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Sunday, April 06, 2008
BRUSSELS, Belgium: Belgian police raided suspected offices of a Kurdish rebel group in three locations on Friday, arresting 29 women, a news network reported.
The federal prosecutor’s office told the VRT network the women of different nationalities are suspected of taking part in training exercises by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, in and around the town of Verviers. They were taken in for questioning.
Documents and computers were also seized in the raids by some 100 members of the country’s anti-terror unit and local police in Brussels, Verviers and Gemmenich.
A spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor’s office was not immediately available for comment.
A PKK member was arrested in Verviers last month. On Thursday, an EU court overturned a decision to place PKK and its political wing on the bloc’s terror list.
The Luxembourg-based Court of First Instance said that decisions made by EU governments in 2002 and 2004 to blacklist the two groups and freeze their assets were illegal under EU law.
The EU’s 27 national governments said, however, they had no intention of removing the PKK or any other groups from the list, sticking to previously stated justifications that the EU had already implemented “a clearer and more transparent procedure’’ by which it adds people or groups to its blacklist.
The PKK was added to the list in 2002, after the Sept 11 attacks. Its political wing was added in 2004. The US and Turkey also list the PKK as a terrorist organisation. Fighting between the guerrillas and Turkish troops has claimed more than 37,000 lives since 1984.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
