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Police in Belgium (symbol image)
Photo: Alastair Grant / AP
The police in Belgium are looking for a suspected right-wing extremist who is said to have threatened a well-known Flemish virologist with death.
The professional soldier had left a suicide note threatening state structures and several people with an attack, said a spokesman for the federal prosecutor's office for the Belga news agency.
It is believed that the 46-year-old is armed with a rocket launcher and a machine gun, among other things.
The police have been looking for the man since Tuesday afternoon and are not ruling out the possibility that he may flee abroad.
Belgium borders among others with North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate.
"There are indications that he is violent"
Belgian Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne told VRT television that the soldier was on a watch list for the Belgian anti-terrorist agency Ocam because of his extremist views.
"There is evidence that he is violent and the past 24 hours have shown that the man is an acute danger," said the minister.
The investigators allegedly found the suspect's car in a wooded area near the village of Dilsen-Stolkkem on the Belgian-Dutch border.
A forester noticed the car on Tuesday evening.
"Heavy weapons" were found in the car, according to the authorities.
The threatened scientist Marc Van Ranst, one of the most famous virologists in the country, and his family have meanwhile been taken to a safe place, according to Belga.
To be against corona measures and vaccines is all too often associated with glorification of violence and raw racism, the virologist wrote on Twitter on Wednesday night.
"So that one thing is clear: such threats don't make the slightest impression on me."
ptz / dpa / AP / AFP
