(Courthouse News) A former professional European soccer player convicted in Belgium 20 years ago of planning a suicide bombing attack on Americans in Europe appeared in U.S. federal court on Monday to begin his jury trial.
Opening arguments began with the prosecution laying out its case against Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian national who played professional soccer [in] Germany beginning in 1989, before a prosecution for drug charges ended that career in 1994.
At Trabelsi’s apartment in Brussels, authorities found the chemical formula to create a bomb was scrawled in the pages of a book about soccer. Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Saunders noted that those same bombmaking materials were found in the basement of an Egyptian restaurant in downtown Brussels owned by a friend of Trabelsi.
