Yousef el-Gbouri (Jihadi Militant, Belgium)

• Full name: Yousef el-Gbouri
• Pseudonym: Abu Osama al-Belgiki?
• Alternatives: N/a
• Location: Iraq, fmr Belgium
• Affiliation: Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [DaIISh]

Yousef el-Gbouri (°ca 1990) is a Moroccan Islamist and long-time resident of the Belgian city of Antwerp. As a young man, he was convicted for burglary.¹ Gbouri later became an Islamic cleric. He often spoke at mosques throughout the city before becoming an imam in Antwerp’s Berchem suburb in February 2015.²

In September 2015, Gbouri left Belgium and traveled to Iraq with two of his associates. They joined the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [DaIISh; Dawlat al-Islamiya fi-Iraq wal ash-Sham]. From Iraq, Gbouri remained in contact with Belgian-based Islamists and recruited several fighters.³ He also guided an Antwerp-based jihadi cell that was planning to assassinate a Flemish nationalist politician and bomb a railway station in the city.⁴ The module was rolled up by police in December 2015.⁵

In late 2017, a Belgian court sentenced Gbouri in absentia to ten years imprisonment for his role in thwarted plot.⁶ On Nov. 12, 2018, another court gave him an eight-year prison term for having recruited Belgian jihadis for the DaIISh.⁷ Judges also stripped him of his Belgian citizenship.⁸