Belgian stay-behind network

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The Belgian stay-behind network, colloquially called "Gladio," was a secret military unit trained to form a resistance movement in the event of an communist invasion by the Soviet Union. It consisted of two organizations: SDRA8 (French: service de documentation, de renseignments et d'action VIII) as part of the Belgian General Information and Security Service, and STC/Mob (Dutch: Sectie training, communicatie en documentatie), as part of the Belgian State Security Service.

The network became publicly known on November 14, 1990, when defense minister Guy Coëme announced its existence. Afterwards, a parliamentary inquiry was held by the Belgian Senate, detailing the history of the network.

Contents

[edit] SDRA8

[edit] STC/Mob

[edit] Parliamentary Inquiry

[edit] Comité I

In 1995, the Belgian Chamber of Representatives organized a parliamentary inquiry into the effectiveness of the Belgian police and judiciary with regards to the Nijvel gang investigation. The conclusions of this inquiry, as well as the earlier Senate inquiry on SDRA8 and the Chamber inquiry on banditism, resulted in the preparation of new legislation governing the mission and methods of the Belgian State Security Service and Belgian General Information and Security Service, which was passed in 1998.

[edit] Shape

After the French withdrawal from NATO's unified command structure in 1966, SHAPE, NATO's central headquarters, moved from France to Mons in Belgium. Following the October 24, 1990 revelation of the existence of Gladio in Italy by prime minister Giulio Andreotti, several others governments' spokespersons claimed that any stay-behind in their own country was history. This only exasperated Andreotti, who declared to the press that the last stay-behind meeting had taken place in Belgium a few days ago.

[edit] Gladio conspiracies

[edit] Assassination of Julien Lahaut

In 1950, the assassination of Julien Lahaut, chairman of the Communist Party of Belgium (PCB) had doubtless both a national and international signification, in which Gladio's influence has been suspected. [1] Repeated requests have been made in the Belgian Chamber of Representatives for an investigation into Lahaut's death. Only recently it has became known that François Goossens, a Leopoldist, was his killer.


[edit] Nijvel gang violence, 1980s

Main article: Nijvel gang

The violence of the Nijvel gang was linked in 1985 by the press to a conspiracy among the Belgian stay-behind SDRA8, the Belgian Gendarmerie SDRA6, the Belgian neo-Nazi group Westland New Post, and the Pentagon secret service Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). However, after a parliamentary inquiry, no hard proof substaining these claims was found, and investigations into the Nijvel gang continue to this day. However, the mystery of how those cold-blooded massacres were committed did convince the Belgian Parliament to create a Permanent Committee of Surveillance of Intelligence Agencies' activities [2].

[edit] Jean Thiriart's far-right Parti Communautaire Européen

According to Amnistia.net, Luc Jouret, founder of the Order of the Solar Temple with Joseph di Mambro, had helped far-right activist Jean Thiriart organize a split in the Communist Party of Belgium (PCB) in the 1970s, creating the "Parti Communautaire Européen, a "Nazi-Maoist" party which succeeded to the Jeune Europe far-right group. According to Bruno Fouchereau, author of La mafia des sectes and collaborator of Le Monde Diplomatique, quoted by Amnistia, this Belgium "Nazi-Maoist group" was in fact controlled by the SDRA-8, Belgium's branch of Gladio. SDRA-8 other's creation was the Westland New Post group.[3]

[edit] 1995: Le Soir controversy

In 1996, Le Soir newspaper caused a public uproar by revealing the existence of a classified document, dated August 1995, and titled "Plan de base de la défense militaire du territoire" ("Base plan of the military defense of the territory"). The newspaper quoted some passages of what it called a "racist plan": "Many communities of immigrants have settled themselves in large agglomerations. If these population groups should reach a position of strong disagreement with Belgian politics, they could launch actions destined to counteract these policies or to make their concerns known... We consider that there exists no open threat in Belgium... But there is a clandestine threat with a permanent character" ("Nombre de communautés immigrées se sont fixées dans les grandes agglomérations. Si ces groupes de population devaient entrer clairement en désaccord avec la politique belge, ils pourraient déclencher des actions visant à contrarier cette politique ou visant à faire connaître leur mécontentements (...) Nous considérons qu'il n'existe aucune menace ouverte en Belgique (...) Mais il existe bien une menace clandestine avec un caractère permanent" - sic).

The dissolved SDRA-8 had been replaced by the "Commandement territorial interforces" (CTI), a military intelligence agency organized by provinces and essentially composed of about a thousand reserve officers. Its goal was to infiltrate civil society and find informants, with the mission to be especially concerned by the "immigrant communities which represented a permanent clandestine threat". According to Le Soir, if the CTI is not closely linked to the military agency Service Général du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (SGRS), then it is "nothing else than a new structure of military intelligence... particularly suspicious of anything that is foreign to it".[4]

Defense minister Poncelet replied in the Belgian Senate that the plan was only an internal draft proposal, which was never approved by the military command or the defense minister himself.[5]

Finally, the activities of the Belgian military intelligence agencies prompted the Parliamentary Committee of Surveillance (Comité R) to investigate various abusive wiretappings. "The central documentation of the SGR is composed of 450 000 files", stated Le Soir.[4]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Hans Depraetere and Jenny Dierickx, "La Guerre froide en Belgique" ("Cold War in Belgium") (EPO-Dossier, Anvers, 1986) (French)
  2. ^ Permanent Comittee for the Control of Intelligence Agencies (Belgium) See in particular the "history" section in the "Presentation" part.
  3. ^ Amnistia info on the Order of the Solar Temple and links with Gladio
  4. ^ a b "L'Armée craint une menace immigrée - L'armée tisse un nouveau réseau d'espions - La justice et le Comité R enquêtent", Le Soir, July 30, 1996. Retrieved on February 2006. (French)
  5. ^ Question Period Bulletin no. 1-28 Belgian Senate, September 24, 1996

[edit] Further reading

[edit] See also

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