A teenage boy has been convicted of plotting terrorist attacks against the Belgian parliament and a Dutch military base.

The boy from Friesland was 12 years old when he set up a Telegram group to recruit people to carry out the attacks in 2024, offering to pay potential accomplices €1,500 to plant a bomb outside the parliament building in Brussels.

He also targeted Deelen military airbase, north of Arnhem, carrying out reconnaissance missions “together and in association with one or more others” and sharing maps, screenshots and videos of the site.

The district court in Leeuwarden said the boy was a supporter of far-right “accelerationist” theories, which advocate stimulating a race war in order to create an ethnically pure “white” state.

“The suspect’s intentions included inciting serious alarm in the populations of countries. such as the Netherlands, leading to an uprising and ultimately to the dismantling of the Netherlands’ democratic political infrastructure,” the court said in its judgment.

It imposed a sentence of three months’ youth detention, suspended for two years, and ordered the boy to follow a treatment programme organised by a national support programme for extremists. The court also ordered the confiscation of his mobile phone.

The judges said they were “concerned” that the boy had become radicalised at such a young age. He was reluctant to discuss his ideas with his immediate friends and family, but he had co-operated with the anti-extremism programme since being enrolled at the start of this year.

Frisian identity

In one message he wrote: “We need to do something, otherwise in 10 years’ time this country will have gone to the dogs,” while another said simply: “Get weapons and revolution”.

“It is clear from these conversations and the statements made in court by the suspect that he still holds extremist views and is deeply preoccupied with his Frisian identity for the future,” the judges wrote.

The boy was said to be “shocked” when he was arrested, believing he was untraceable on the internet. His plans fell through when the person he approached to carry out the attack on the Belgian parliament did not reply to his messages.