Forty-six people, most of them still at large, were put on trial in Belgium on Monday for suspected membership in a propaganda group urging Belgian muslims to take part in the jihad holy war in Syria, AFP reports.
Armed police guarded the court in the northern port city of Antwerp where 16 people alleged to be part of Sharia4Belgium, including its head Fouad Belkacem, are being tried on charges of leading a terrorist organization. If convicted, they could face 20 years in prison.
The remaining 30 are being tried on charges of belonging to Sharia4Belgium.
Belgian recently cracked down on local terrorists, with a report two weeks ago revealed that police prevented several terror attacks in the European state by jihadists returning from Syria and by sympathizers of the Islamic State (ISIS) terror group.
Present for the trial on Monday were Belkacem, a Salafist extremist ideologue known for his sermons in the streets and on the Internet, and seven others. The defendants who are at large are believed to be in Syria where some of them may have been killed, according to the federal justice office.
Investigators said Belkacem never traveled to Syria, unlike most of the members of the group, but he was the "catalyst" who prompted many to go and fight there.
Sharia4Belgium, based in Antwerp, campaigned for the introduction of strict Sharia Islamic law in Belgium. In 2012, it said it was disbanding, but the authorities suspect that it has continued to recruit dozens of volunteers to fight in Syria.
Officials say that up to 400 Belgian nationals have gone to fight in Syria, with around 100 having returned home to potentially put their military experience to use in terror attacks.
The trial comes five months after a deadly attack on the Jewish museum in the center of Brussels, which has accompanied a resurgence of anti-Semitic violence in Europe and fears of terror strikes from foreign fighters returning from Syria.
The main suspect in the attack which left four people dead is a Frenchman, Mehdi Nemmouche, who spent more than a year as an ISIS torturerin Syria and is now being held in Belgium on charges of "murder in a terrorist context."