A 27-year-old man named as Mohamed B has been remanded in custody for three months on suspicion of preparing a bomb attack on Dutch police and soldiers, the NRC says on Thursday.

B is said to have asked online for information about how to make a bomb and, the public prosecution claims, was in possession of bomb-making instructions.

He also wrote a 35-page document directed at the Dutch government in which he threatened targets in the Netherlands because of the Dutch involvement in the anti-IS coalition in Iraq.

B, a Moroccan national who is illegally living in the Netherlands, ‘was in the early stages of preparing an attack’, the prosecution department is quoted as saying by the NRC.

He was arrested last October following a security service alert which said he was trying to buy a weapon. No weapon was found during a house search but papers, a table and USB stick with bomb making instructions, were taken by police.

B’s lawyer André Seebregts told the court his writings and requests for information should not be taken seriously. He also claimed to be in Iraq, which was not the case, Seebregts pointed out. ‘A lot of people use a different internet identity,’ Seebregts told the court.

The court decided B should be kept in the Vught high security prison for a further three months, pending his trial.