The Director General of Belgium's Federal Judicial Police Eric Snoeck stated on Friday that the terrorist threat posed to Belgium "has not disappeared completely", seven years after the terror attacks that rocked the capital in 2016.
Speaking on La Première radio programme, Snoeck explained that the threat of terrorism had not vanished but had "without a doubt evolved in an unstable geopolitical landscape."
Just this year alone, Belgian security services had to deal with a terrorist hoax about an attempted attack on Brussels' metro lines, while the Miss Belgium competition saw a terror suspect arrested over a potential murder plot.
Snoeck went on to explain that such plots are "still occasionally foiled in Belgium by the police and security services," who still viewed terrorism as the number one issue facing Belgian security. Currently, there are still over 700 potential terrorists currently being monitored by Belgium's anti-terror unit.
However, Snoeck also revealed that some of the staff at the federal police's anti-terrorism services will be redirected towards other units. This aims to maintain "minimum capacity " for the unit's missions and promote better cooperation with other security services.
