Fouad Belkacem, who founded Sharia4Belgium and sent young men to fight in Syria, has applied for asylum in Belgium.
Vlaams Belang MP Francesca Van Belleghem was tipped about the move and shared the news with local media.
She noted that he had almost finished his sentence and made his application in order to avoid being sent back.
Van Belleghem said that 77 per cent of asylum applications in Belgium are now “fraudulent, and Belkacem is a prime example of this”.
She said the asylum system should not be abused like this.
“Meanwhile, taxpayers are footing the bill for every day that these kinds of proceedings drag on, while they themselves have to dig deeper and deeper into their pockets,” she said.
Belkacem was born in Rumst, in Antwerp province, northern Belgium, in 1982 but is of Moroccan descent.
He has a wife and three children in Belgium. He married in prison and his wife is also of Moroccan/Belgian descent.
He held Belgian and Moroccan nationality until October 23, 2018, when the Antwerp court of appeal stripped him of the Belgian one for his activities.
The court held that he had “seriously failed in his duties” as a citizen after his conviction as leader of a terrorist organisation. The Constitutional Court had cleared the way earlier that year, finding no bar to the withdrawal.
Belkacem not only recruited fighters for Syria, but also made inflammatory remarks, stating that certain politicians should face the consequences of their “behaviour” if they did not show “repentance”.
He also called the death of Vlaams Belang politician Marie-Rose Morel, who died of cancer in 2011, “a punishment from God”, and praised Osama bin Laden.
He is due for release in May 2027, by which point he will have spent about 15 years in custody.
Without the Belgian passport he is, in principle, a Moroccan national to be sent to Morocco.
He wants to avoid this by making an asylum claim.
Belgian asylum and migration minister Anneleen Van Bossuyt, of the Flemish nationalist N-VA, said: “I will exhaust every means to remove this man from the country.”
“Anyone who turns against our society and seeks to replace our democracy with Sharia law has no place here.”
She did add, though, that Belgium is a country governed by the rule of law, and therefore his asylum application will first be independently assessed by the Office of the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons (CGRS).
“I am monitoring this closely and giving this case absolute priority,” she added.
Van Bossuyt announced a series of measures to avoid future abuse of procedures for people coming out of jail or closed centres.
In February 2015 Belkacem received 12 years and a fine of €30,000 for running Sharia4Belgium. The group recruited and indoctrinated Muslims in Belgium for armed conflict in Syria and argued for sharia in place of Belgian democracy.
Founded in 2010 and dissolved in October 2012, it was the first organisation a Belgian court classed as terrorist. Forty-five other members were convicted with him.
He is now invoking the asylum system of the democracy he campaigned to replace with sharia.
Prison sources describe him as a model inmate, and he has been granted day-release without incident. That record does not restore the nationality he lost.
Moroccan nationality is in practice inalienable, since it can be surrendered only by royal decree. He remains Moroccan in Rabat’s eyes and therefore removable in Belgian ones.
Belgium has been sending more Moroccan prisoners home: 233 in the first eight months of 2026, the largest national group among post-sentence returns.
Merz calls for reviewing whether dangerous dual nationals convicted of the most serious terrorist offences should lose German citizenship after the Berlin CSD attack. https://t.co/b2I3Ajo9Ic
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) July 28, 2026
