VRT News sources report that a suspect has been detained on suspicious of having sent mails to around 30 schools in Wallonia in which he threatened to carry out an attack. The suspect is reported to be a minor.
According to our sources, the suspect was identified through the IP address of his computer. It is as yet not clear whether the suspect is a pupil at one of the schools.
On Wednesday around 30 Walloon schools received an email sent from a Russian email address that read that the follow day (yesterday, Thursday 11 April) would be “a day full of terror”. Our sources report that the mail also made references to the Islamist terror group IS. The writer of the email also referred to Kalashnikovs, bomb harnesses and grenades.
The security services were informed at at around 11pm on Wednesday. The terror threat analysis agency OCAD issued a statement calling for “increased vigilance”.
During the night OCAD carried out a thorough analysis of the situation and declared that the threats made in the email were “improbable” and “unbelievable”. However, in the meantime some Walloon schools had taken measures. Some schools remained closed on Thursday (French-medium schools in Belgium are not on Easter vacation this week), while at other schools pupils were not allowed out on to the playground during break. There were also extra police patrols around some schools.
An investigation was launched to identify the sender of the email. Our sources have told us from the outset that detectives believed that the sender of the email was possibly just a teenager that wanted to get a day off school.