The Hungarian authorities have arrested a Belgian woman (29) who was reportedly on her way to Turkey. The woman is Yousra B.S., who was previously convicted of participating in activities of a terrorist organisation (Islamic State – ISIS) and is now violating her parole conditions.
Last week, B.S. was arrested at the Népliget bus station in Hungary's capital, Budapest – which is accessible via Flixbus from Brussels. The news was then picked up from the Hungarian press by Het Laatste Nieuws and confirmed by the Federal Prosecutor's Office.
Now, De Morgen confirmed that the woman in question is Yousra B.S., a Moroccan-Belgian woman from the Brussels municipality of Uccle who was previously convicted of terrorism. In the summer of 2015, she travelled to Syria where she reportedly joined ISIS, but was captured on suspicion of espionage.
She fled and returned to Belgium and married Sandokan D. from the Brussels municipality of Anderlecht. In 2017, B.S. was arrested for a second time because the court suspected that she wanted to leave again. Her 14-year-old sister, Firdaous, is also said to have radicalised during that period and then left for Syria. That same year, Firdaous returned from Syria with a child and ended up in a youth institution in Belgium.
Telegram profile
A year later, Yousra B.S. came to the attention of the authorities again because of an image posted to the Telegram profile 'Abu&Umm Abdallah' on 15 July 2018, when Brussels prepared itself for a festive reception of the Red Devils on the Grand Place after the World Championship.
On the Telegram profile, an image of Belgian football fans was posted with the caption: "Capture them, attack them and ambush them. Grand Place, 1000 Brussels."
Sandokan D. used the alias Abu Abdallah and security forces were able to find out that the Telegram profile used a phone number linked to the SIM card in the smartphone of one of Yousra B.S.'s brothers. The device was also connected to the Wi-Fi network of her mother's house in Uccle.
Still, B.S. and D. were acquitted in late 2020, as it could not be sufficiently proven that they were the ones behind that Telegram profile. Yousra, however, was convicted of participating in activities of a terrorist organisation and was sentenced to 55 months in prison. She was released on conditions, one of them being that she was not allowed to travel to Turkey.
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The Belgian authorities apparently kept an eye on Yousra B.S., because Hungary arrested her on the basis of a European arrest warrant, which says she faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for "participating in the activities of a terrorist group or leaving the territory of the country to commit or support a terrorist crime."
The Belgian security services are convinced that she is on her way to another man in Turkey – likely a French convert Clément G., who is imprisoned there but will soon be released. The Hungarian court plans to hand over Yousra B.S. to Belgium.
