LIEMPDE, The Netherlands (AFP) - Dutch police raided a suspected Kurdish separatist training camp in a small village in the southern Netherlands, and several other locations arresting 38 people, the state prosecutor`s office said.
Police raided a camp site in Liempde where an alleged training camp of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party PKK was set up, according to Dutch authorities.
According to the authorities investigations revealed that some 20 people received "training to prepare for the armed struggle of the PKK in Turkey, by committing terrorist attacks".
Police arrested 29 people in Liempde and nine suspects in other locations in the Netherlands. Ten houses were searched and police seized night-glasses, documents and a fire arm.
Because the PKK is on the European Union list of terrorist organisations the Dutch said the people were arrested on suspicion of belonging to a terrorist organisation.
"Participants in the training were taught courses on `special warfare`," according to the prosecutors.
"There are indications that participants in the course would have been sent to Armenia at the end of the training to join PKK actions," they added.
The authorities here stressed that a Dutch investigation into the PKK had been ongoing for more than a year and the raid was not linked to the recent crackdown on suspected Muslim extremists after the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by an alleged Islamic radical.
The camp site is located in a remote area near the picturesque farm village of Liempde. Local residents said they had never seen anything suspicious.
"They even arrested the owner of the camp site, who is such a nice man," hunter Toon Schuurmans said, adding that the only gunfire he had ever heard came from his own rifle.
The PKK, now also known as KONGRA-GEL, waged a bloody 15-year war for self-rule in the mainly Kurdish eastern and southeastern parts of Turkey -- claiming more than 36,000 lives -- before announcing a unilateral ceasefire in 1999.
The group called off the truce in June this year, threatening to carry out attacks and warning tourists and investors to stay away from the country.
Since then, there has been a sharp increase in clashes between the rebels and Turkish government troops.
Two years ago Turkey heavily criticized the Netherlands for their tolerant attitude towards the PKK.
The Netherlands has a large Kurdish community, but numbers are difficult to pin down as official statistics group people according to nationality, and Kurdistan, an area linking Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, is not a country.
In 1999 the NRC-Handelsblad newspaper said there were between 60,000 and 70,000 ethnic Kurds in the Netherlands. The largest part, some 45,000 people, come from Turkey.
Earlier this week, a Dutch judge ruled that Nuriye Kesbir, a senior member of the PKK, could not be extradited to Turkey because there were not enough guarantees that she would be treated fairly.
Turkey accuses Kesbir of being behind at least 25 attacks between 1993 and 1995 on military targets in eastern Turkey, where the PKK party is fighting for Kurdish self-rule.
Kesbir has always denied being involved in the attacks and claims she dealt only with women`s issues as a member of the group`s presidential council before she was arrested at Amsterdam airport in September 2001.
11/12/2004 - 16:02 GMT - AFP