Tunisian extradited to U.S. in suspected al-Qaida bomb plot

WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 (UPI) -- Belgium has extradited to the United States a Tunisian to face federal charges of working with al-Qaida in a bomb plot in Europe in 2001, U.S. officials said.

Federal law enforcement officials accused Nizar Trabelsi, arrested in Belgium two days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, of working with Osama bin Laden to carry out a suicide attack at a military facility in Europe soon after the U.S. attacks, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.

CNN identified the facility as the Kleine-Brogel military base where NATO forces, including the U.S. Air Force, are based.

Trabelsi, 43, is charged with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals outside the United States, conspiracy and attempt to use weapons of mass destruction, as well as providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

Trabelsi, who once played soccer in Germany, has been in a Belgian prison for 12 years on a terrorism-related conviction. He was charged separately in Washington in a 2006 secret indictment that was unsealed Thursday.

He has not entered a plea, the Times said.

The indictment indicated Trabelsi met with bin Laden -- who was killed in 2011 when U.S. Navy SEALs raided his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan -- several times in 2001 and agreed to be the suicide bomber in the European attack. He traveled to Pakistan to get funds to "carry out his mission" then rented an apartment in Brussels and bought materials to build a 2,200-pound bomb, the indictment says.