‘Kamikaze’ bikers held in raids

FIVE people have been arrested and an arms cache was found after overnight terror raids yesterday in France and Belgium linked to a bikers’ club, called the Kamikaze Riders.

A series of searches in the gritty Anderlecht district of Brussels had netted four people – and arms hidden in a garage, the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office said.

In northern France, a joint Franco-Belgian operation picked up a man on suspicion of having links to the Kamikaze Riders, a group implicated in terror offences in Belgium.

The arrests come with Belgium and France still on high alert after several deadly attacks claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group.

Only last month, a soldier shot dead a man who had attempted to set off a bomb in Central Station, in the heart of the Belgian capital, sparking fears of further incidents.

Investigators said at the time they had evidence that the suspect, a 36-year-old Moroccan national, had sympathies with IS.

They also found explosives in a raid on his home in Molenbeek, a Brussels district where many of the jihadis of the deadly Paris attacks in November 2015 and those in Brussels in March last year grew up and found shelter.

But a Belgium prosecutors’ spokesman said the latest raids were directly linked to the Kamikaze Riders and not the investigation into the Paris and Brussels attacks.

“The raids were independent from that probe,” the prosecutor’s office said.

Weapons and explosives were found in one of the searches – and four people were arrested and taken in for questioning.

In France, a source said a 42-year-old arrested in a suburb of the northern city of Lille was suspected of plotting a violent action.

Several members of the Kamikaze Riders, formed in 2003 and known for testing the patience of the police, were suspected of links to foiled attacks in Brussels in late 2015.

In October, two members of the group were jailed for belonging to a terrorist group.

They were suspected of plotting an attack similar to the November 2015 carnage in Paris, which left 130 people dead.

Four months later, jihadists also struck in Brussels, killing 32 people and leaving hundreds injured.