Belgian authorities on Saturday charged three men with “attempted terrorist murder” after raiding dozens of homes in raids linked to a reported threat to fans during a Euro 2016 soccer game.
Named by prosecutors as Samir C., Moustapha B. and Jawad B., the trio were among 12 people detained during the overnight raids, hours before thousands of people gathered around screens to watch Belgium play Ireland.
The three have also been charged with “participation in the activities of a terrorist group,” while the nine others were released after questioning, prosecutors added.
Photo: Reuters
The areas searched included neighborhoods in Brussels where the militants in last year’s Paris attacks and the Brussels suicide bombings in March had planned their assaults.
Prosecutors said they were responding to a need for “an immediate intervention.”
Flemish commercial broadcaster VTM reported that the swoop was connected to a threat linked to Belgium’s game against Ireland, held on Saturday afternoon in Bordeaux, France. No incidents were immediately reported after the match, which ended with a 3-0 defeat for the Irish, sending Belgians into the streets in celebration.
“Over the coming hours, we are going to take additional and updated security measures,” Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said after a national security council meeting to discuss the threat.
Public events planned for the coming days would go ahead, he said, including those linked to the Euro championships.
“We want to continue living normally,” the prime minister said.
Forty people were initially detained and 152 garages searched in Friday night’s raids in Brussels, Flanders and Wallonia, VTM said, adding that the threat was chiefly to public fan zones where supporters follow games on giant screens.
The raids “passed off without incident,” prosecutors said in a statement, adding that no arms or explosives were found.
Belgium is still reeling from the Islamic State suicide bombings at Brussels Airport and on the city’s metro on March 22, which killed 32 people and wounded hundreds more.
Officers in Flanders moved on the town of Zaventem close to the airport, while in the capital there were raids in the suburbs of Molenbeek, Schaarbeek and Forest, all closely associated with the perpetrators of both the Paris and Brussels attacks.
Molenbeek is notorious for being a hotbed of Muslim extremism, where Salah Abdeslam, the only surviving member of the 10-man team that attacked Paris, killing 130 people, hid out for months until his dramatic arrest on March 18.
One of the searches in Wallonia was conducted in the area of Fleurus, close to Brussels South Charleroi Airport, a region that also hosts nuclear power facilities.
Euro 2016 host France is on maximum alert after an assailant previously convicted for extremism knifed a police officer and his partner to death in a Paris suburb on Monday last week.
In Belgium, the latest raids have raised tensions in a country already dogged by the threat of terrorism.
Belgian media on Wednesday last week reported that police had warned that Islamic State fighters had recently left Syria to carry out attacks.
“They would separate into two groups, one for Belgium, the other for France, to attack in pairs,” an official document revealed by the newspaper La Derniere Heure stated, describing the threat as “imminent.”
On Saturday, a source close to Belgian authorities confirmed to reporters that several leading political figures have recently had their security increased.
According to state broadcaster RTBF and Flemish newspaper Het Nieuwsblad, 30 people and their families have had their personal security stepped up since Friday, including the prime minister, the minister of the interior and the minister of justice.
Despite the disclosures, Belgium’s terror level remains at level three, meaning that an attack is considered “possible and probable.” The highest, level four, would mean the threat is “serious and imminent.”
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not