On Friday, the Brussels Criminal Court sentenced a 21-year-old man from Opwijk (Flemish Brabant), a far-right extremist, to an effective prison sentence of three years.
The man had incited an attack via the online messaging service Telegram and had made plans to commit a double attack in Belgium. According to the court, the young man has still not distanced himself from his extreme ideology and he still displays a dangerous attitude.
The 21-year-old came to the attention of the intelligence services and subsequently of the court due to his activities on extreme right-wing channels on Telegram. There he showed deep sympathies for three violent right-wing extremists, Anders Breivik, Brenton Tarrant and Dylann Roof. He also encouraged other participants in the chat conversations to commit attacks.
Like Breivik and Tarrant, among others, the young man had written a manifesto in which he called for the creation of a white ethnostate. With that goal in mind, he planned to commit two attacks, one in which he would set fire to a mosque, and a second in which he would use an automatic rifle to kill as many people as possible.
The Federal Public Prosecutor's Office had meanwhile deployed an undercover agent to determine the concrete nature of these intentions. The young man came into contact with this undercover agent when he went looking for small arms and automatic rifles.
When he announced that he wanted to work with other individuals unknown to the authorities, it was decided to intervene and arrest the young man.
According to his lawyers, the young man held extreme right-wing views, but he had never encouraged anyone to commit an attack, nor did he have any plans to do so himself.
