Journalist deported by Turkey ‘may have forged paperwork for Syrian’s visa’

Screen shot of Ans Boersma via YouTube interview in 2018
Screen shot of Ans Boersma via YouTube interview in 2018

The Dutch journalist deported by Turkey on security grounds is suspected of falsifying paperwork, sources have told television current affairs show Nieuwsuur.

Ans Boersma arrived back in the Netherlands on Thursday after being picked up when she went to renew her residency permit. A spokesman for Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the deportation followed information from the Netherlands that Boersma had links to terrorist group Jabhat al-Nusra.

The Dutch public prosecution department later went public, saying that her name had come up in a criminal investigation relating to terrorism but that Boersma was not suspected of any terrorist activity.

Boersma herself said on the Financieele Dagblad website that her deportation may relate to the fact that ‘up to summer 2015’ she had a relationship with a Syrian national who was arrested in the Netherlands last autumn because of his former membership of the Syrian terrorist organisation Jabhat al-Nusra.

Various media outlets now report that this is the Syrian national spotted by activists attending a film at the Balie centre in Amsterdam in 2017 and who was arrested last October on terrorism charges.

Residence permit

The public prosecution department says they consider it likely the 32-year-old was active for Islamic terror group Jabhat al-Nusra before coming to the Netherlands. He was given a temporary residency permit in 2014.

One source told Nieuwsuur Boersma is suspected of helping the man, whom she likely met in Turkey in 2013 or 2014, to get a visa for the Netherlands and that forgery is thought to be involved.

Boersma herself has not commented further on the case.

The man, who goes by the name Aziz, told the Volkskrant at the end of 2017 he had never had anything to do with IS.

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