(Brussels Times) As part of Belgium’s strategy against extremism and terrorism, priority monitoring is being carried out on 624 jihadists, 64 right-wing extremists and 14 left-wing extremists, said Belgium’s Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis (CUTA) in a statement on Friday.
According to the unit, last year in Belgium 218 terrorist or extremism reports were filed. “The threat has become much more diffuse in recent years,” said Gert Vercauteren, director of the CUTA.
Vercauteren’s statement comes just a few days after the trial of the March 2016 Brussels terrorist attack began, which killed 32 people and injured over 300. It was the deadliest attack in Belgium during peacetime.
