Belgian police are hunting a Palestinian asylum seeker who threatened to blow himself up after hearing that his entire family had been murdered in Gaza.
All police units across Belgium are looking for 23-year-old Mohammed A., who said on Tuesday that he “wants to die as a martyr in an explosion” after hearing that his family had been murdered.
He reportedly applied for asylum on September 26 and was told to show up again the next day, but he did not.
A spokesperson for the Brussels public prosecutor’s office says he is aware of the threats that Mohammed A. is said to have made: ‘The person of Palestinian origin is currently being actively traced. In the interests of the investigation, no further comment will be made.”
No additional security measures were taken at Brussels Airport, nor at the Jewish Institution in Antwerp, following the news of the manhunt.
The hunt for Mohammed A. comes just a day before all 27 EU leaders meet in Brussels for a two-day summit to discuss, among other things, the war between Israel and Hamas.
His threats were made just a week after two Swedish football fans were killed, while a third was injured by an ISIS fanatic armed with an automatic rifle, in what the attacker said was revenge for the death of a six-year-old Palestinian boy. in the U.S.
All police units in Belgium are looking for Mohammed A., who threatened to ‘martyr’ himself
The level of the Belgian terrorist threat is still at ‘serious’, the second highest level, a week after armed police shot dead Tunisian suspect Abdesalem Lassoued, 45, in a café in the Brussels district of Schaarbeek.
He opened fire on a group of Swedish football fans in a taxi driving along Boulevard d’Ypres, just a few minutes north of the city’s famous Grand Plaza, ahead of Belgium’s Euro 2024 qualifying match against Sweden.
Several people fled into an apartment building after hearing the gunshots, but Lassoued followed them and opened fire again in the hall.
He said in a video on social media: ‘I am a fighter for Allah. I am from the Islamic State. We love those who love us, and we hate those who hate us.
‘We live for our religion and we die for our religion, Alhamdulillah. Your brother took revenge in the name of the Muslims.
‘So far I have killed three Swedes, Alhamdulillah. Three Swedish ones, yes.
‘Those to whom I have done wrong, may they forgive me. And I forgive everyone. Salam Alaykum’.
Lassoued unsuccessfully sought asylum in Belgium in 2019 and has been living illegally in the country for several years since then.
Belgian media reported on Wednesday that Lassoued’s alleged accomplice was arrested while carrying the weapon used to massacre the Swedish football fans.
“He will be interrogated in connection with his possible involvement with Abdesalem Lassoued’s weapon,” the federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
Later today, the suspect will be brought before the investigating judge, with a view to his further arrest.
Politics reported that Lassoued was already known to the authorities in 2016 as someone with a ‘radicalized profile’.
Video shows Abdesalem Lassoued, wearing a fluorescent orange jacket and holding a gun, as he drives through the streets of Brussels
Although the 45-year-old had no previous convictions in Belgium, he was known to police for a series of “suspicious activities”, including suspected human trafficking and threatening the security of the state, Belgian Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne said week. .
The minister tried to defend the Belgian intelligence services at the time by saying: ‘The information was verified, nothing else could be done.”
Van Quickenborne states that the intelligence services at the time were inundated with ‘dozens of reports of this nature per day’.
“Although he was known to law enforcement, there was no concrete indication of his radicalization – therefore he was not on the OCAD (terrorist) watchlist,” the minister said.
Belgium has suffered a series of terrorist attacks in recent years, all linked to Islamic groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda.
Eight men have been tried over their connections to the 2016 suicide bombings that killed 32 people and injured hundreds at Brussels airport and a metro station.
Last week, local media named the suspect as 45-year-old Abdesalem Lassoued (photo)
Crime scene view of the aftermath of the shooting in Brussels on Tuesday
Forensic investigators at the scene in Brussels where two people were shot dead by a gunman
In September, a court in Brussels sentenced eight men to life in prison for the jihadist bombings in Brussels.
French national Salah Abdeslam and Belgian-Moroccan Mohamed Abrini – already sentenced to life in prison by France for the November 2015 Paris massacre – were the most prominent of the six suspects found guilty of murder in July.
Abrini, who was one of the targeted bombers but decided at the last minute not to blow himself up, was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
The court ruled not to give Abdeslam an additional term after he was sentenced to twenty years in Belgium in 2018 for a gun battle.
The attacks – near the headquarters of both NATO and the EU – were part of a wave of attacks claimed by Islamic State in Europe.