Belgian authorities have arrested two people on suspicion of being involved in a plot to attack “emblematic sites” in Belgium’s capital during New Year’s celebrations, the country’s federal prosecutor’s office said Tuesday.
The men are members of a Muslim biker gang called the Kamikaze Riders and are suspected to have discussed attacking Brussels’ Grand Place square and other places where crowds gather as well as police and military facilities, a senior Belgian counterterrorism official told CNN on condition of anonymity.
The plot appears to have been inspired, but not directed, by the ISIS terror group, the counterterrorism official said.
The arrests came as investigators conducted several searches in the Brussels area, as well as the surrounding province of Flemish Brabant and the eastern Belgian city of Liege, on Sunday and Monday, the prosecutor’s office said.
Authorities were investigating an alleged plot that was to target several prominent sites in Brussels during “the end of the year/New Year’s celebrations,” according to the prosecutor’s office, which released no further details about the plan.
The prosecutor’s office said the arrests are not linked to November’s deadly Paris terror attacks, which authorities say involved a number of militants who had been living in Belgium.
Investigators seized computer equipment, military-type training outfits and ISIS propaganda material, the office said.
The names of the suspects were not released. But the counterterrorism official said they were based in the Brussels and Vilvoorde areas, had easy access to weapons and had been involved in robberies and other criminal activity.
Because of the pair’s access to weapons, police felt they had to act quickly after the two allegedly discussed the terror plans, the counterterrorism official said.
One of the men was arrested on suspicion of playing a leading role in the threat of attacks, participating in the activities of a terrorist group as a leader and recruiting to commit terrorist offenses as author or co-author, the prosecutor’s office said.
The other was being held on suspicion of playing a leading role in the threat of attacks and taking part in the activities of a terrorist group as an author or co-author, the office said.
The Kamikaze Riders gang in Belgium has been linked to terror investigations in the past, according to multiple Belgian media reports. A former leader of the group, Abdelouafi Elouassaki was arrested in 2013 after one of his brothers, who had traveled to wage Jihad in Syria, allegedly called him from there to tell him about a plan to attack the main law courts in Brussels. Elouassaki was released without charge. At least one other member of the group has also been reportedly tied to pro-Jihadi activity.
Morten Storm, a former Danish biker gang member who became a jihadi before becoming a double agent for the CIA for half a decade, told CNN that there was an increasing emergence of “gangster Jihadism” in Europe. “Muslim gangsters and jihadis have one thing in common: They hate the system,” Storm told CNN. “A significant number of Muslims involved in criminality are becoming born again in the religion and are becoming radicalized in jail, but many keep their ties to their old circles when they get out,” he said.
