(AFP) Belgium’s Prime Minister Alexander De Croo called for calm on Wednesday after escalating tensions between Turkish and Kurdish groups in the country just days before local elections in Turkey. “We are asking everyone to calm down, stop the provocations and continue […]
(Brussels Times) Today (22 March) marks eight years since the Brussels terror attacks which claimed the lives of 32 people and injured hundreds more. The famous Manneken-Pis statue has been dressed for the occasion in a nod to victims and their families. […]
(Jerusalem Post) Radical Islam is running rampant in Belgium as the European country takes a pro-Hamas and anti-Israel stance, Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli told the Jerusalem Post on Saturday night in response to an imam reciting a Quranic verse about warfare […]
(Brussels Times) Three individuals suspected of involvement in a terror attack in the capital last month are appearing before the Brussels Chambers on Friday, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office confirmed. The three individuals were placed under arrest following five house searches in Ninove, […]
(Brussels Times) Over a month after two Swedish citizens were killed during a terror attack in Brussels, Belgium will maintain terrorist threat level 3 for now, Prime Minister Alexander De Croo announced during a press conference on Wednesday afternoon. Belgium’s Coordination Body […]
(Politico) Belgium had big plans for its upcoming Council presidency. But its handling of the October 16 shooting spree by Tunisian gunman Abdesalem Lassoued, which left two Swedish football supporters dead, has since led to a series of embarrassing revelations. Lassoued was […]
(European Conservative) Police in the French city of Nantes have arrested a man in relation to the Brussels terrorist attack earlier this week which saw two Swedes shot and killed by Tunisian illegal immigrant and radical Islamist Abdesalem Lassoued, who was shot […]
(AP) Belgium’s justice minister resigned on Friday over what he described as a “monumental error” after it was discovered that Tunisia was seeking the extradition last year of an Islamic extremist who shot dead two Swedes and wounded a third this week. […]
(AP) Abdesalem Lassoued had been denied residency in four European countries by the time he chased two Swedish men into a building in Brussels this week and gunned them down at close range with a semiautomatic rifle. The 45-year-old Tunisian arrived on […]
(AP) The alleged attacker who killed two Swedish soccer fans in Brussels this week before he was shot dead by police was residing in Belgium illegally and should have left the country three years ago, but never did. In a country that […]
(Reuters) The leaders of Belgium and Sweden and the European Union’s chief executive promised on Wednesday to tighten border security and step up repatriations after a failed asylum seeker from Tunisia shot dead two Swedish football fans in Brussels. They spoke after […]
(Politico) Belgian authorities were well aware of the gunman who caused terror in Brussels — and yet he was still able to shoot two people dead. The attacker — who killed two Swedish football fans on Monday evening — had been on the authorities’ […]
(AP) Authorities in the Belgian capital shot and killed a Tunisian national on Tuesday hours after they say he gunned down three Swedish soccer fans, killing two of them, and posted a video online in which he claimed credit for the attack […]
(Politico) Iran has released Olivier Vandecasteele, a Belgian humanitarian worker who had been detained in Iran for more than a year, in exchange for convicted terrorist Assadollah Assadi, who had been imprisoned in Belgium. “Olivier Vandecasteele is on his way to Belgium,” […]
(AFP) Belgium said Thursday it is studying a request from Iran for the transfer of one of its diplomats who is serving time on a conviction for terrorism offences. “It is true that Iran has officially requested the transfer of Mr Assadollah […]
(Brussels Times) The victims of the terror attacks that rocked Belgium on this day seven years ago are being remembered with moments of reflection on Wednesday, including at the Maelbeek metro station in Brussels and at Brussels Airport in Zaventem, where the […]
(Politico) Belgium’s highest court on Friday overturned a freeze on a controversial treaty on prisoner exchanges that could allow an Iranian diplomat convicted of terrorism to be sent back to Tehran. The treaty would allow Iranians convicted in Belgium to serve their […]
(AFP) Belgian authorities faced questions Friday over how a convict on a terrorism watch list was able to stab a police officer to death, hours after making threats and demanding psychiatric treatment. Between 2016 and 2018, Belgium faced a wave of deadly […]
(AP) Belgian authorities said Friday that the lone assailant who killed one police officer and wounded another in a stabbing attack had been on a counterterrorism list of potential extremists. The Belgian suspect, who had served six years in prison for common-law […]
(AP) A lone assailant killed one police officer and wounded another Thursday in a stabbing attack that two Belgian judicial officials said was suspected to be terrorism-linked. The suspect was shot and taken to a hospital. Eric Van der Sypt, from the […]
(AFP) Belgian judges granted a request Friday from opponents of the country’s new prisoner-swap deal with Tehran to block any attempt to send home an Iranian diplomat convicted on terror charges until the decision can be challenged in court. A lawyer acting […]
(Politico) Belgian MPs ratified a controversial treaty with Iran that could allow an Iranian convicted of terrorism in Belgium to be sent back to Tehran. Out of the 131 MPs present, 79 voted in favor while 41 rejected the treaty, and 11 […]
(Politico) Belgium’s parliament on Tuesday will debate whether to ratify a proposed treaty with Iran that could allow an Iranian convicted of terrorism in Belgium to be sent back to Tehran. Iran has loudly demanded that Belgium release Assadollah Assadi, an Iranian […]
(Brussels Times) After the liberation of Iraqi and Syrian territories from the self-proclaimed caliphate of the Islamic State (IS), certain European countries have chosen to repatriate the children of IS fighters as well as their mothers — if they possessed European citizenship. […]
(Brussels Times) Belgium paid tribute on Tuesday to victims of terrorist attacks, including those lost during the attacks that rocked the country six years ago in Brussels and Zaventem. On 22 March 2016, a double attack took place in Belgium, first at […]
(Middle East Eye) On 16 July, the majority of the women and children held at al-Roj camp were still asleep when a convoy of cars entered the open-air prison in northeastern Syria. A few minutes later, at around 5.30am, six Belgian [women] […]
(Brussels Times) This morning a military aircraft landed at Melsbroek airfield outside Brussels, carrying six women and ten children repatriated from a refugee camp in Syria. The women, aged between 25 and 53 years, have been held in the Kurdish-run camp Roj […]
(BBC) Ten children and six mothers held in a prison camp for jihadists in Syria have been flown home to Belgium. It is the biggest repatriation of suspected Islamic State (IS) members since the group’s fall in 2019. Hundreds of Europeans who […]
(Euronews) The resignation of a government representative in Belgium has sparked fresh political debate about Islamic headscarves. [Ihsane] Haouach, a Belgian-Moroccan woman, stepped down on Friday from her role as a government commissioner at the Institute for the Equality of Women and […]
(Swiss Info) Despite multiple pleas from international bodies, Switzerland refuses to repatriate adult detainees from Syrian camps, a policy that effectively leaves seven Swiss children stranded in the war-torn country. They were just four and nine years old, when in 2016 their […]
(AFP) The children of European jihadists left trapped in a Syrian camp after their fathers’ defeat on the battlefield now face radicalisation in their turn, a Belgian expert warns. Heidi De Pauw, director of the association Child Focus, has visited orphans and […]
(AFP) “Aline, Patricia, Leopold, Gilles, Johanna, Loubna …” Five years on, the 32 victims of the Brussels bomb attacks were the focus of Monday’s national day of commemoration. The March 22, 2016, bombings were the worst massacre in the country’s modern peacetime […]
(Brussels Times) Next Monday, 22 March, sees the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks at Brussels Airport and on the Brussels metro at Maelbeek. But even five years after that shock, the country’s intelligence and security services are unable to work together […]
(Brussels Times) A lawyer who survived the terrorist attack in Brussels on 22 March 2016 is taking the Belgian government to court for its mishandling of the aftermath of the incident and its treatment of the victims. The man, Nic Reynaert, is […]
(AFP) Belgium must do everything it can to ensure the safe return of Belgian jihadists’ children being held in Kurdish-controlled camps in northern Syria, Prime Minister Alexander de Croo said Thursday. De Croo warned that conditions in the two camps, packed with […]
(Brussels Times) Military patrols will be maintained on the streets of the country’s cities until 2 December at the earliest, the government has decided. In May this year, the caretaker administration of Sophie Wilmès took the decision to bring an end to […]
(Brussels Times) The terrorist threat level in Belgium remains unchanged after the knife attack in the French city of Nice on Thursday, according to the Coordinating Body for Threat Analysis (L’Organe de coordination pour l’analyse de la menace — OCAM) and the […]
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