American nuclear arsenal threatened in Belgium

Marko Balazevic

Group of young women and men, Belgian peace activists, have shown the astonishing vulnerability of nuclear weapon warehouses. It can be seen on this video how they managed to cross the fence and enter the “Kleine Brogel”, where American Army nuclear bombs are being kept. Girls and guys made a protest march on February 7, 2010, walking around for an hour and pasted their propaganda material on bunkers - all that without anyone noticing it.

What seemed to be a Sunday morning walk was certainly not a child-play. The place where these six young activists recorded their video material is a military warehouse in Belgium. It has not been officially confirmed, but it is believed that this place holds more than 20 nuclear warheads belonging to the U.S. Army.

“The whole action was meticulously planned and trained in details. In the case we encountered someone the plan was to go straight at the person in order to demonstrate that we pose no threat. . . although you can never know how military or a certain individual would react”, said one of the participants of this spectacular action. He further explained: “We wanted to protest against nuclear weapons on the Belgian territory.”

These young people are belonging to the organization that goes by the name of Vredesactie (Peace Action) that radically advocates for a society in which conflicts would be resolved without violence or threat of violence. The activity they demonstrated by this act is called Bombspotting.

However, they themselves were surprised how far they were able to get. Not to mention how astonished must have been people in charge of security of nuclear weapons and the base itself. For, there are 40 bases such as this one in the area. Allegedly some of them are keeping nuclear bombs. Entering the perimeter of such a place and placing their propaganda materials was clearly not a serious problem for the group of young activists which makes this action truly sensational.

“Putting weapons in a state of activity or transporting them would however be a more serious problem, much more difficult than trespassing”, said a man related to the case.

Nonetheless, this almost effortless attempt of trespassing exemplifies certain weaknesses in the whole security system of this base and places similar to it.

“Snow helped us a little bit. Guard’s foot trails and paths could be seen, so we chose different routs”, said one of the activists of this unusual Sunday stroll. It took an hour before they had first encounter with a guard. Their video materials have been seized and they were interrogated.

They managed to conceal and take out this footage, casting shame on security forces that didn’t even comment on the whole thing.

“You can rest assured that these young people were not able to reach important places”, declared the spokesperson. Allegedly, the bunker on which they placed their posters and bands was empty. However, these claims are not easily verified. The fact remains that these young activists crossed the clearance around the base, made holes in the fence, crossed the airstrip all the way to a bunker and managed to remain undetected for more than an hour. It has to be noted that this military perimeter was previously threatened with an attack by Al-Qaeda. One Tunisian, Nizar Trabelsi, was sentenced to ten years in 2003 for being part of this case.