Belgian police on Monday arrested a Muslim preacher in Brussels who is suspected of having recruited Muslims to go and fight in Syria.
39-year-old Jean-Louis Denis, a Belgian citizen who converted to Islam, was involved in an organization that distributed food to the poor and homeless people at Brussels North Railway Station.
He reportedly approached young Muslims at the station with a view to persuading them to go and fight in Syria, according to reports in the Belgian press.
According to Belgium’s Interior Minister, Joelle Milquet, up to 2000 European jihadists are fighting against the Assad regime in Syria, including 100-150 Belgian citizens. Most foreign fighters are from Britain, Germany and France.
The minister organized last week a meeting with her colleagues from the Netherlands, France, Germany, Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Belgium, Australia, Canada and the U.S. to discuss the problem of foreign fighters in Syria and the impact of their return in their homeland.
“With regards to the European figures, we estimate it’s between 1500 and 2000, given what we have heard from our counterparts. The numbers by country are very standard. It’s a phenomenon which is very generalised, that exists in identical proportions with people who have identical profiles,” she said.
The European Union's counter-terrorism coordinator, Gilles de Kerchove, addressed the EU Interior Ministers about the "major security threat" that the increase of foreign fighters in Syria poses.
He specifically called for a better use of airline passenger information available to security officials to keep track of when and how rebels move to Syria.
Such legislation remains stuck in the European Parliament, and could remain there for months to come, considering the furor over the revelations from National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden about wholesale data-mining of EU citizens.