{"id":223379,"date":"2016-06-18T12:52:56","date_gmt":"2016-06-18T12:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=223379"},"modified":"2016-06-18T12:52:56","modified_gmt":"2016-06-18T12:52:56","slug":"12-arrested-as-belgium-swoops-on-terror-suspects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=223379","title":{"rendered":"12 arrested as Belgium swoops on terror suspects"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">Police in Belgium have made 12 arrests in a huge anti-terror operation, nearly three months after the deadly bomb attacks on Brussels.<\/p>\n<p>Those detained overnight are suspected of plotting a terrorist attack, prosecutors say. They were among 40 taken in for questioning.<\/p>\n<p>Searches were conducted in 16 municipalities, mainly around Brussels, with checks on 152 lock-up garages.<\/p>\n<p>On 22 March, bombs killed 32 people at a Brussels airport and a metro station.<\/p>\n<p>No arms or explosives were found during the searches, which passed off without incident, Belgium&#8217;s federal prosecutor said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>Among the areas where searches took place was Molenbeek, a Brussels district which has become notorious because of its associations with jihadists.<\/p>\n<p>The federal prosecutor said the operation had been launched after investigations which &#8220;necessitated an immediate intervention&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>However, the Belgian government has not raised the threat level.<\/p>\n<p>There were several warnings of new attacks in recent days.<\/p>\n<p>On Friday evening, four federal ministers including Prime Minister Charles Michel were placed under heightened police protection along with their families, Belgian media report.<\/p>\n<p>Belgian police are said to have recently received a warning that a group of militants from the so-called Islamic State (IS) group had left Syria en route for Europe, planning new attacks in Belgium and France.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape has-caption full-width\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"responsive-image__img js-image-replace aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/ichef-1.bbci.co.uk\/news\/624\/cpsprodpb\/11487\/production\/_90019707_033545263-1.jpg\" alt=\"A police officer with a dog in Brussels, 17 June\" width=\"604\" height=\"401\" data-highest-encountered-width=\"624\" \/><\/span><\/figure>\n<p>An unnamed security source was quoted by Belgian newspaper DH (in French) on Wednesday as saying the group had &#8220;left Syria about a week-and-a-half ago aiming to reach Europe via Turkey and Greece by boat without passports&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, a Belgian national named as Youssef EA was arrested on Friday and charged on suspicion of terrorist activities in connection with the March attacks, which were claimed by IS.<\/p>\n<p>Belgian media report that he is the eighth person to have been charged over the attacks, which were carried out by three suicide bombers.<\/p>\n<p>Investigators have established connections between the Brussels bombers and the IS attacks on Paris on 13 November, in which 130 people were killed.<\/p>\n<p>Several of the Paris bombers came from Belgium and some of the bombs were made in a flat in Brussels.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Police in Belgium have made 12 arrests in a huge anti-terror operation, nearly three months after the deadly bomb attacks on Brussels. Those detained overnight are suspected of plotting a terrorist attack, prosecutors say. They were among 40 taken in for questioning. Searches were conducted in 16 municipalities, mainly around Brussels, with checks on 152 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":223381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=223379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/223381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=223379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=223379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=223379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}