(Sofia) A man convicted of terrorism in Belgium was arrested in Bulgaria as he entered the country on its border with Turkey, Bulgarian authorities said Thursday.
He was arrested on Wednesday during a special operation carried out by the special services and the border police, the Bulgarian prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
According to this press release, he was wanted “in connection with a 20-year prison sentence for terrorism received from a court in a European country” and another nine-year and five-month sentence received in Turkey.
When contacted, prosecutors declined to give more details.
The Bulgarian media presented the man as Yassine Lachiri, allegedly close to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the coordinator of the November 13 attacks in Paris in 2015.
A source close to the investigation confirmed to AFP that it was indeed Mr. Lachiri.
A spokesperson for the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office said that an extradition request was in preparation. “A person has been arrested whose surrender we are asking for.”
Yassine Lachiri was sentenced in 2015 to 20 years in prison in absentia by a Brussels court, as part of the trial of a jihadist recruitment network in Belgium.
According to the Belgian press, Mr. Lachiri also has Moroccan nationality and was stripped of his Belgian nationality in absentia in 2020.