Abdelkader Belliraj (, ; born 1957, Nador) is a Moroccan-Belgian citizen who was found guilty in 2009 of arms smuggling and planning terrorist attacks in Morocco.
Petty criminal in the 1980s
In the 1980s, he was convicted in Belgium of assault and battery (1986), followed by convictions for breach of trust, arms trafficking, and trafficking in false passports with accomplices inside the Moroccan consulates of Belgium (1987), as well as embezzlement (1989).
Hold-up in 2000
A Belgian-Moroccan gang organized the successful hold-up of a Brinks agency at Kehlen, Luxembourg on April 17, 2000. They stole 17,000,000 Euros. Abdellatif Bekhti was arrested and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in Luxembourg in January 2003. He succeeded in escaping two months later with the help of his gang. He then took refuge in his native Morocco. He allegedly laundered 2,500,000 Euros in Morocco, where he was re-arrested in 2008, along with the so-called "Belliraj network".
On October 31, 2008, the son of Abdelkader Belliraj, Omar Belliraj, as well as Abdellatif Bekhti's brother, Abderahim Bekhti, appeared before the Correctional Court of Brussels for laundering money from the Brink's hold up (on charges that had been slightly reduced to robbing €15,000,000). Abderahim Bekhti then said, "Yes, my brother committed the hold up in Luxembourg and he took away more than 600 million Belgian francs. He was condemned to 20 years and he escaped. Then, he was taken in by Belliraj who told him he would invest the money. He invested in hotels and my brother never again saw his money. Thence, there is no whitewashing. I bought a Porsche, that's all.". The judicial correspondent of La Dernière Heure mentions that both Abderahim Bekhti and Omar Belliraj laundered the money by buying four Porsches, one Mercedes, a Honda motorcycle and a jet ski, with €500 banknotes only.
Political and alleged terrorist career
Marxist-Leninist sympathiser in the 1970s
During his youth in the 1970s, Belliraj probably was a sympathiser of Ila Al Amam, a Moroccan Marxist-Leninist clandestine (but nonviolent) organization (now the Annahj Addimocrati party), and had contact with Mustapha Moatassim, who 20 years later became one of the founders of the Al Badil Al Hadari party, a small legalist Islamist party with exceptionally good relations with the legalist Far Left Parti Socialiste Unifié and with Moroccan human rights organizations. Moatassim and another leader of this party were arrested alongside Belliraj in February 2008 and the party was officially disbanded by the Moroccan government.
Panarabist activist and Belgian trade-unionist in the 1980s
In the 1980s, Belliraj was an activist of the Arab section of the Belgian Christian trade-union, led by Panarabist Moroccan Lekbir Nouri. However, there are only Abdelkader Belliraj’s own words to substantiate the allegation of his so-called union activism. The Christian trade union stated that Belliraj was never an employee of its organization or has never been a member in any way (affiliation being a condition for recognition as a union activist). Nouri and his companions travelled a lot in the Middle East, notably in Libya and Iraq, both for political reasons and to get money from the oil-rich Arab "progressive" regimes. A delegation of this Arab section, including Belliraj, met in Iran with Ayatollah Khomeini in 1981. There were allegations of embezzlement in 1989 against both Nouri and Belliraj, who allegedly disposed of large amounts of Libyan and Iraqi funds for their personal use.
Informant of the Belgian State Security Service since the 1990s
At some point in the 1990s, Belliraj became an informant for the main Belgian intelligence agency, the Sûreté de l'État, infiltrating criminal organizations, and even having dinner with Osama bin Laden less than two weeks before the September 11 attacks. Belliraj turned over large amounts of information regarding Al Qaeda to Belgian authorities. It has also been alleged that he could have been as well an informant for the CIA and/or for a Moroccan secret service.
Alleged murders in 1988–1989
Belliraj allegedly committed a series of murders in 1986–1989, being paid $300 for three of them by Abu Nidal. Some of them were claimed in Beirut by the Soldiers of the Right. In the 1990s, Belliraj allegedly became involved with international criminal and terrorist networks, working as a "money man.". However, he recanted all these "confessions" later, through his attorney. He also stated in an open letter, written in August 2008 and published by the Belgian newspaper Le Soir, that they had been extorted under torture, a practice common in the Moroccan police system.