Authorities in Belgium have launched the trial of nine people accused of being part of an Al Qaida network based in the European Union. The network was believed to have recruited Muslims for financing and attack operations for Al Qaida's North African branch.

The defendants were indicted on charges of terrorism, including recruiting Muslims for suicide missions. Officials said recruitment was conducted over an Islamist website operated by a Belgian woman believed connected to the Al Qaida Organization in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM.

Malika El Aroud, 50, was said to have operated the Web site for nearly five years. In 2007, Ms. El Aroud was convicted by Switzerland of running the site for Al Qaida and received a six-month suspended sentence. Later, she returned to Belgium and allegedly renewed Internet recruitment.

All of the defendants were identified as North African emigrants long under surveillance by Belgium's intelligence services. They were arrested in December 2008 after an intercepted e-mail indicated an imminent suicide strike. The defense said the e-mail by one of the suspects marked a ruse to impress a former girlfriend.

Several of the accused were said to have been trained by Al Qaida or Taliban in Afghanistan. They included Hicham Beyayo, a 25-year-old Belgian, who wrote in an intercepted e-mail that he had been ordered to conduct a suicide attack. No details were released.

A leading member of the Al Qaida network was identified as Ms. El Aroud's husband, Moez Garsalloui. Garsalloui, a 41-year-old Tunisian, escaped Europe for what officials asserted was either Afghanistan and Pakistan and was being tried in absentia.

All of the others on trial were identified as Belgian nationals and natives from North Africa. They included Ali El Ghanouti, Yusuf Said Arissi, Hicham Bouhali, Jean Trefois, Abdul Aziz Bastin and Mohammed Bastin.

Ms. El Aroud was said to have long been under surveillance by several EU states. In 2003, she was acquitted on charges that she helped plan the suicide bombing that killed Afghan resistance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud two days before the Al Qaida suicide attacks that killed more than 3,000 people in the United States in 2001. Her first husband, Abdul Satar Dahmane, was killed in the Afghan suicide bombing.

Belgium and other EU states have increased cooperation with North African allies to foil Al Qaida-aligned attacks. In 2009, Belgium and Morocco worked together in the arrest of a suspected AQIM financier who operated in Brussels.