Turkey deports Dutch journalist Ans Boersma over alleged links to Syrian terror group

Dutch prosecutor confirmed journalist 'is a suspect in an ongoing criminal investigation into terrorism' but she is not suspected of 'terrorist crime'

Ans Boersma was deported from Turkey (Simon Calder)

Turkey deported a Dutch journalist on Thursday after receiving a report from her own government linking her to a Syrian militant group listed as a terrorist organisation.

Ans Boersma, 31, writes about Turkey and Syria for Het Financieele Dagblad, the Netherlands’ main business daily, among other papers. She was detained on Wednesday after appearing at a government office to renew her residency. She was not allowed to go home, and instead hustled quickly to the airport.

Awaiting her departure, she tweeted: “And then suddenly you are in the plane back to the Netherlands. Declared an unwanted person in Turkey.”

Fahrettin Altun, spokesperson for Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said in a statement that the “deportation was in no way related to her journalistic activities during her stay in Turkey”. He instead said the move was due to allegations from authorities in The Hague that Ms Boersma was under investigation for ties to Jabhat al-Nusra, a Syrian jihadi group with al Qaeda links that now calls itself Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

The Dutch prosecutor confirmed that Ms Boersma “is a suspect in an ongoing criminal investigation into terrorism” but that she is not suspected of a “terrorist crime”. The prosecutor said she was not detained on arrival in Amsterdam and the Netherlands had not requested her deportation from Turkey.

Mr Altun said authorities had received intelligence from the Dutch police alleging Ms Boersma had links to a designated terrorist organisation and requested information about her movements in and out of Turkey.

He tweeted: “The Netherlands told Turkey that the reporter, who was deported today, had links to Jabhat al-Nusra.

“We acted on intelligence from the Netherlands and took a precautionary measure. If a credible foreign government agency tells you that one of their citizens has links to terrorism, you don’t take any chances. The Dutch authorities alone are in a position to explain why they arrived at that conclusion.”

Nusra’s successor organisation controls much of Syria’s northwest Idlib province, where it has largely defeated rebel groups backed by Turkey and is girding itself for war against forces loyal to Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad.

Though designated by many governments as a terrorist organisation, it has never been linked to attacks in the west, focusing on its quest on toppling the Assad regime.

Turkey has been accused of seriously backsliding on press freedom in recent years and has been described as one of the world’s biggest jailers of journalists. But Turkish authorities recently renewed Ms Boersma’s press credentials, and insisted privately as well as publicly that her coverage had nothing to do with her expulsion.

Netherlands has not suffered a deadly terrorist attack in years thanks in part to what experts describe as aggressive policing and surveillance of citizens, especially those who travel to Turkey, which has been seen as a gateway to battlefields in Syria and Iraq where militant groups operate.