PARIS, France: French police have detained three teenage boys who are said to have been in contact with four people arrested in Belgium over the weekend on suspicion of planning a jihadist attack, a person close to the case said on Tuesday.
The three teenagers, aged between 15 and 17, are not believed to be directly involved in the impending attack on the concert hall in Brussels, but are believed to support Islamic extremist views.
Belgian police on Sunday arrested three minors in their “late teens” and detained an 18-year-old boy who prosecutors said sent messages for an attack that was deemed “imminent enough to intervene.”
Investigators said the three minors specifically targeted the Botanical Culture Complex, one of the capital’s most famous sites.
Preliminary investigations indicate that the adult suspect was planning another attack and was in contact with one of the three minors.
The arrests were the result of a police operation to investigate potentially violent individuals linked to Islamic extremism.
The suspects were arrested after raids on residential addresses in the cities of Ninove, Charleroi and Liege.
No weapons or explosives were found. Police took his cell phone and laptop for analysis.
Belgian authorities have been on high alert since the terrorist attacks by suicide bombers in 2016, when explosions at Brussels airport and the city’s metro killed more than 30 people.
And last October, a Tunisian man was shot dead by police in Brussels after two Swedish soccer fans were shot.
