Montasser AlDe’emeh claims that he has worked for the civil intelligence body in Belgium. According to an interview on Monday (18 July) in De Morgen, he says that he received an invitation to work for the Belgian intelligence after he travelled in 2014 to Syria to discuss with a Flemish fighter in the ranks of the radical islamic Al-Nusra front.
"They were interested in my contacts and my documentation. If I wouldn’t have responded to them, they would monitor me daily and hack my phone and my laptop. It would have made things much more complicated."
It is still a secret what exactly AlDe'emeh did for the intelligence body. He claimed for a year and a half that he felt empathy for the fighters of the Islamic State. "But through me, they were directly in contact with the Belgian intelligence."
AlDe'emeh told the police and the investigating judge that he had collaborated with the state security after his arrest in January. He was suspected to have issued a false certificate of radicalization. "I would not have done that, it was a difficult time for me," he says.
"Since then the state security has kept its distance. Since the attacks of 22 March, we again had contact, but I no longer work for them," he said.
Montasser AlDe'emeh, who grew up in a refugee camp in Jordan, is doing doctoral research on the roots of jihadism in the Middle East at the Radboud University in the Netherlands.
After the Gaza war in 2014, he visited the Gaza strip. A noticed interview with him on the situation in Gaza was published in Mondial Niews (MO).
The Brussels Times (Source: Belga)
