Belgium charges woman over suspected Europe terror plot

BRUSSELS: A 24-year-old Belgian woman has been charged with terrorism offenses on suspicion she helped people plotting an attack in Europe, prosecutors in Brussels said Thursday.

Belgium remains on high alert less than two weeks before the first anniversary of last year’s Daesh attacks on the Brussels metro and airport which killed 32 people.

European officials also fear further attacks like the ones that have hit places like the French Riviera city of Nice and the German capital Berlin.

Identified as Molly B., the woman was arrested during an overnight raid earlier this week on a house in western Belgium, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.

“The investigation shows indications of assistance being provided by the woman to persons with the intention to commit an attack in Europe,” it said without naming any countries.

The woman from the Flemish city of Wevelgem was charged with “participation in the activities of a terrorist organization.”

No weapons or explosives were found in the raid. The prosecutor’s statement said the investigation was completely independent of the probes into the November 2015 attacks in Paris and the March 2016 bombings in Brussels. The prosecutor’s office said it would release no further information in order to protect the investigation.

Belgium has remained on high alert since March 22 last year when three home-grown suicide bombers attacked Brussels airport and a metro station near EU headquarters, killing 32 people and wounding hundreds more.

Daesh in Syria and Iraq claimed responsibility for the bombings that investigators say were carried out by the same cell that slaughtered 130 people in Paris on Nov. 13, 2015.

In December, Eric Jacobs, the head of the judicial police in Brussels, said Belgium had prevented six attacks in the previous two years.

In January 2015, Belgian police dismantled a cell in Verviers in the east of the country which was later seen as the rough beginnings of the group that later mounted attacks in Paris and Brussels.