🔗 Share this article Reported Plan to Strike Belgian Prime Minister Prevented Belgian law enforcement have arrested three suspects suspected of planning an attack on the government's prime minister, Bart de Wever. Legal authorities described the suspected plan as a extremist assault with jihadist roots targeting the prime minister and fellow elected representatives. During searches conducted in Deurne, Antwerp, in proximity to the PM's home, authorities uncovered a suspected improvised explosive device and indications that the individuals were preparing to employ a UAV. While the prospective targets of the attack were not disclosed by name by the legal authorities, Vice Premier Maxime Prevot confirmed that the prime minister was among them. "Information of a premeditated strike aimed at Prime Minister Bart de Wever is extremely shocking," Prevot stated in a message on social media on the day of the arrests. "This underscores that we are facing a genuine terrorist threat and that we have to stay alert," he added. The three individuals taken into custody on allegations of plotting a terrorist killing and involvement in the functions of a terrorist group all reside in the city of Antwerp, according to the legal authorities. They were with years of birth in the early 2000s. By late Thursday, one of the individuals was let go, while the remaining two were undergoing questioning and expected to face a judge on the next day. Federal prosecutors revealed that the accused were detained after a magistrate ordered searches of their dwellings in the city by officials assisted by bomb detection canines. It was during these investigations that they located a object which appeared to be an IED, federal prosecutor Ann Fransen announced at a news conference on that day. Raids also uncovered a container of metal spheres and a 3D printer, with signs of drone weaponization plans, she noted. Fransen said that there had been eighty counter-terrorism cases initiated in Belgium in the current year - exceeding the overall count of instances in the previous year. During the spring, five individuals were convicted for a scheme last year to strike the prime minister while he was holding the position of the mayor of Antwerp.