Two teens arrested in Belgium for pledging allegiance to the Islamic State and plotting knife attack

Two teenage boys, aged 16 and 17, have been arrested in Belgium and are accused of pledging allegiance to ISIS and plotting to attack police officers with knives, prosecutors said.

The pair were arrested late Saturday in the eastern town of Eupen, near the border with Germany, and are being held in a detention facility for minors.

Belgium state broadcaster RTBF said they had recorded videos of themselves swearing loyalty to ISIS.

ISIS has claimed responsibility for the terror attack by Kujtim Fejzulai in Vienna on Monday which left four people dead.

Belgium has already been targeted by ISIS, including in March 2016 when suicide attackers killed 32 people and wounded 340 others in blasts at Brussels airport and in a metro station in the capital.

In May 2018, a radicalised man murdered two police officers and a student in an attack claimed by ISIS.

Last week, a Belgian teacher was suspended for showing pupils a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed while discussing the murder of a French teacher who had used the same image.

The teacher, who works in the Brussels district of Molenbeek, showed one of the cartoons previously published by French magazine Charlie Hebdo while explaining Samuel Paty’s murder.

‘Our decision is uniquely based on these are obscene images. If it had not been of the Prophet we would have done the same thing,’ said a spokesperson for Molenbeek’s mayor.

Source: Daily Mail