Reported Plan to Attack Belgian PM Prevented

Belgium's police have taken into custody three suspects suspected of planning an assault on the country's premier, Bart de Wever.

Prosecutors labeled the alleged plan as a "jihadist-inspired terrorist attack" targeting the PM and other elected representatives.

During searches conducted in Deurne, Antwerp, close to the prime minister's personal dwelling, authorities uncovered a suspected improvised explosive device and indications that the suspects were preparing to employ a UAV.

While the intended targets of the assault were not publicly identified by the legal authorities, Deputy Prime Minister Maxime Prevot revealed that the prime minister was among them.

"Information of a intended strike aimed at Prime Minister Bart de Wever is deeply alarming," Prevot wrote in a post on X on the day of the arrests.

"This underscores that we are confronting a serious extremist danger and that we have to keep watchful," he added.

The three people taken into custody on allegations of plotting a terrorist killing and engagement in the operations of a terrorist group all live in the Antwerp region, as stated by the prosecutor's office. They were with years of birth in the early 2000s.

By late Thursday, one person was released, while the remaining two were under interrogation and expected to be presented before a court on the following day.

Legal authorities said that the accused were taken into custody after a court official ordered raids of their dwellings in the location by law enforcement backed by explosive sniffer dogs.

Throughout these searches that they discovered a item which appeared to be an IED, legal representative Ann Fransen said at a press conference on Thursday.

Searches also found a collection of ball bearings and a 3D printer, with signs of drone weaponization plans, she noted.

The prosecutor stated that there had been 80 extremist probes opened in the nation in the current year - surpassing the overall count of cases in the previous year.

During the spring, five people were sentenced for a 2023 plot to attack the prime minister while he was holding the position of the mayor of Antwerp.