Belgians hold terror gang boss

Press, 18 December 1985, Page 10

Belgians hold terror gang boss

NZPA-Reuter Brussels Belgian authorities believe that they have made a big breakthrough against European urban guerrillas after arresting Belgium’s most wanted fugitive, Pierre Carette, and three associates. Carette, aged 33, is suspected of leading the Fighting Communist Cells, an extreme Leftist Belgian group with proven links to France’s Action Directe and West Germany’s Red Army Faction. The three men and a

woman, all armed, were seized in a well prepared police raid on a cafe in the southern town of Namur yesterday. They did not resist. A senior aide to the Justice Minister, Dr Jean Gol, called them the hard core of the C.C.C., which has claimed responsibility for 27 bomb attacks on NA.T.O., American, and Belgian establishment, targets in the last 14 months. Police sources said that Carette had lived in Brussels with the fugitive foun-

ders of Action Directe, Jean-Marc Rouillan and Nathalie Menigon, as recently as last (northern) summer. The two groups had used the same hide-outs and shared explosives, stolen from a Belgian quarry last year, with the Red Army Faction, leading investigators to speak of a “Euroterrorist” network. The arrests of Carette, Didier Chevolet, aged 30, Bertrand Sassoye, aged 22, and Pascale Vandegeerde, aged 28, resulted from in-

tensive surveillance by the police and State security agents.

Carette was also being sought for the attempted murder of a security guard, shot and wounded during a C.C.C. car-bomb attack on a Brussels bank in October. The four were taken to Brussels under unprecedented security measures in a 15-vehicle motorcade. The C.C.C. last struck on December 6, blasting a N.A.T.O. fuel pipeline in central Belgium and the headquarters of the allied

agency that runs the pipeline network in Versailles, France. Two firemen died in a May Day car-bomb by the C.C.C. at the headquarters of the Belgian Employers’ Federation this year. Belgian insurance experts estimate that the group’s attacks in 1985 had done damage of up to a billion francs ($39.73 million). The group, believed to have financed itself with armed robberies, conducted suitcase bombings on banks in daylight last month.