A growing number of minors are appearing in terrorism-related cases linked to jihadist ideology in Belgium, a phenomenon that intensified in 2025.
As Belgium prepares to mark the tenth anniversary of the Brussels jihadist attacks of March 2016, which killed 32 people and were carried out by the same cell responsible for the November 2015 Paris attacks, authorities warn that the ideology behind those attacks remains present and continues to inspire plots, even if these now appear less sophisticated. Intelligence services have revealed the involvement of a 12-year-old child in a suspected jihadist attack plan.
This information was made public on Thursday, January 15, in the latest annual report of the Belgian State Security Service, the country’s civilian intelligence agency. The report states that “salafist-jihadist-inspired terrorist threat (…) remains the primary terrorist threat” in Belgium, accounting for 80 percent of the cases recorded by authorities within the national information-sharing system on extremism and terrorism.
Last year, individuals identified as consumers of jihadist propaganda from groups such as the Islamic State or Al Qaeda were “often young, even very young,” with an average age of 22, “the youngest being 12,” according to the report.
In 2025, an “increasing number of minors,” representing about one third of suspects, were involved in projects involving potential violent action, according to the intelligence service. However, the report notes that in most cases these adolescents had projects that were “not very advanced, not very sophisticated, or not very feasible.”
The report does not specify what judicial follow-up was given to the case of the 12-year-old child considered to pose a potential threat.
