Alleged Plan to Target Belgian Prime Minister Foiled
Belgium's police have taken into custody three people accused of conspiring to carry out an strike on the nation's PM, Bart de Wever.
Legal authorities described the reported plot as a terrorist act motivated by jihadist ideology targeting the PM and fellow elected representatives.
During searches conducted in Antwerp's Deurne district, close to the prime minister's home, authorities found a potential improvised explosive device and evidence that the accused were intending to use a drone.
While the intended targets of the assault were not disclosed by name by the federal prosecutors, Second-in-command Maxime Prevot stated that Belgium's leader was among them.
"The news of a premeditated strike aimed at Prime Minister Bart de Wever is deeply alarming," Prevot wrote in a post on X on the day of the arrests.
"It highlights that we are dealing with a very real extremist danger and that we have to keep watchful," he added.
The three suspects taken into custody on allegations of attempted terrorist murder and participation in the operations of a jihadist network all live in the Antwerp region, as stated by the legal authorities. They were born in three different years between 2001 and 2007.
By late Thursday, one person was released, while the other suspects were still being questioned and scheduled to appear in court on the following day.
Federal prosecutors said that the suspects were arrested after a judge ordered searches of their dwellings in the location by police officers assisted by explosive sniffer dogs.
In the course of these raids that they found a object which "bore strong resemblances to an improvised explosive device", federal prosecutor Ann Fransen announced at a news conference on the day of the events.
Investigations also uncovered a collection of ball bearings and a three-dimensional printer, with "indications that they intended to use a drone to attach a payload", she continued.
The prosecutor disclosed that there had been eighty counter-terrorism cases launched in the nation in the current year - more than the full amount of cases in the previous year.
In April, five people were convicted for a 2023 plot to strike De Wever while he was holding the position of Antwerp's mayor.
