Three Chechens suspected of "terrorist" activities on behalf of the Islamic State of Khorashan (IS-K) were arrested in Belgium today, a day after several searches were carried out for fear of an attack, the federal prosecutor's office announced.
Seven people, all of Chechen origin, were arrested during the searches, and of the three that the judge decided to charge and keep in judicial custody, two are suspected of "preparing a terrorist attack".
For now, there is "no concrete indication of a specific objective", added the Belgian prosecutor's office.
In statements made on Thursday to the France-Presse news agency (AFP), a spokesperson for the prosecutor's office had ruled out any proven link with the Paris Olympic Games, insisting that no specific target of the potential attacks had yet been identified.
Several Belgian media outlets had reported that the arrests were made as a precaution in the context of the Olympic Games, whose opening ceremony is taking place today under tight security measures.
Reports indicated that the operation in Belgium was carried out in coordination with the German authorities, who also carried out house searches and arrested two alleged members of this Central Asian 'jihadist' movement on Thursday.
Abdulraschit D. and Surkho Z., of "Russian nationality", were arrested on German soil on suspicion of raising funds for the Islamic State (IS) group, according to the German Federal Prosecutor's Office.
Today, the Belgian Prosecutor's Office identified the three suspects arrested only by the initials "A.S.", "A.A." and "K. L."
The latter is accused of three crimes of "financing terrorism", as well as "participation in the activities of a terrorist group, in this case ISKP (the English acronym for IS-K)" and "preparation of a terrorist attack".
The Antwerp court will decide on July 31 whether or not to extend his pre-trial detention.
ISIS-K is the Afghan branch of the Islamic State group, which is suspected of expanding its activities into Europe in recent years. Chechnya is a small Russian republic with a Muslim majority that was devastated by two bloody wars in the 1990s, forcing tens of thousands of people into exile, mainly in Western Europe. The scene of an Islamist rebellion targeting Russian interests, the region has also supplied fighters to ISIS and other jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq over the past decade. Belgium has seen a number of attacks in recent years. On 22 March 2016, 32 people were killed in two suicide bombings, the first at Brussels' Zaventem international airport, followed by another explosion at Maalbeck metro station in the Belgian capital. These attacks, the deadliest in the country, were carried out by the same 'jihadist' cell responsible for the attacks of 13 November 2015, which left 130 people dead in Paris.
More recently, in October 2023, a gunman shot dead two fans of the Swedish national football team who were in Brussels to watch a match between Belgium and Sweden.
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