Brussels: Europe and the Arabs

Belgium's Coordination Body for Threat Analysis, OCAD, announced Thursday that it had received 218 reports of terrorism or extremism last year. One of them was assessed as "extremely dangerous".

OCAD stated this in a press release on Thursday. Threats are still most often expressed through social media and messaging apps.

OCAD classified reports into four levels of threat: low, medium, severe or very severe. More than half of the reports rated the coordinating body as low. Fewer than one in ten threats have been serious at some point, OCAD writes. One in three falls into the middle category. In most cases, the threat was related to an individual rather than the threat emanating from terrorist or extremist groups. Several threats came from outside. The target stuff was mainly in Belgium. She added that the threat could target the general public, religious communities, immigrants and asylum centers as well as politicians, virologists and other health experts. OCAD says one in three reports was linked to jihadist ideology. More than one in ten reports are from right-wing extremists. Reports indicated the presence of explosives, firearms and Madame's vehicles.

The overall threat level in Belgium remained, on average, at level two throughout 2021. It is below the level of risk and crisis and is level four.

Belgium had suffered as a result of terrorism, and the most prominent incident was the Brussels bombings in March 2014