Jihadists killed in Belgian terror swoop inspired by Lee Rigby murder

January 16, 2015

The Belgian terror cell who planned to behead a policeman in the street in ‘a second Paris’ attack were inspired by the murder of fusilier Lee Rigby two years ago, the lead investigator has revealed.

Federal prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt, who coordinated a series of raids on 12 alleged terrorist hideouts across Belgium told Mail Online: ‘Their plan was to launch attacks similar to that in London when a soldier was killed. They wanted to kill policeman on the street .’

The radical Islamic group also wanted to film the horrific murder and then circulate the footage online, bringing the brutality of ISIS to the West, police sources said. Two members of the Belgian terror cell were gunned down by armed officers in Verviers overnight, while a third was overpowered after being wounded.

The group was reportedly equipped with Belgian police uniforms, four Kalashnikov machine guns, handguns and explosives. Another part of their twisted plot included taking a number of hostages by seizing a bus, it was reported by Belgium’s RTL broadcaster.

In total 13 people were arrested in last night’s raids, according to Mr Van der Sypt, but he could not rule out the possibility that others were still at large. He said: ‘As with any investigation of this kind you cannot rule out that there are members that are unaccounted for.’

The dead suspects are believed to be Redouane Hagaoui, 22, also known as Abu Khalid Al Maghribi, and Tarik Jadaoun, who has the alias Abu Hamza Belgiki. The pair had recently returned to their home town of Verviers after fighting with ISIS in SyriaPolice swooped on the cell after having them under surveillance for several weeks, detaining 16 suspects – including two in France who are awaiting extradition – during a dozen raids.

They said that the attack was to take place today or last night so they had to act immediately.

‘A second Paris has been avoided,’ an official from Belgium’s ministry of justice was quoted as saying, with reports claiming the jihadis had planned to launch attacks on police.

The trigger for the operation was the return of a terror kingpin yesterday from abroad to Verviers, Belgian newspaper Het Laatste News reported. According to the investigators, it was then only a matter of hours or days until the suspects put their sick plan into action, the newspaper said.

It was not yet clear whether the radical Islamist leader was among the dead or was the man who was overpowered. ‘Last week it came to a head. We had to intervene,’ federal prosecutor Eric Van Der Sypt said. ‘The danger is not over. We do not know what the next few hours, days and weeks will bring.’

Belgian authorities did not give details of the people detained or killed, but said most were Belgian citizens. Officials stressed that the targets of their crackdown had no known connections to last week’s attacks in France.

Mr Van der Sypt said: ‘I cannot confirm that we arrested everyone in this group.’

Jewish schools in Brussels and Antwerp have also been closed as a precaution over fears they could be targeted by radical Islamists, according to Belgian website Joods Actueel.

Belgian authorities did not give details of the people detained or killed, but said most were Belgian citizens.

Belgium has seen a particularly large number of people join extremists in Syria, and is ‘the worst affected country in Europe relative to population size’, said Peter Neumann of the London-based International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation.

A former Belgian counter-terrorism chief told public broadcaster RTBF that the Charlie Hebdo attacks could have prompted Belgian police, who say they already had the suspects under surveillance, to bring forward the arrests.

‘Paris may have speeded things up, in the sense that every country in Europe is on alert,’ said Andre Jacob. ‘Some information that may have been barely “ripe” has been acted on quicker than planned … because the threat was real.’ The fact that the two unidentified men opened fire with assault weapons on police who called at the apartment in Verviers showed the danger the group posed, Jacob added.