The American-born woman from the Flemish Brabant village of Hoeilaart was among a number of people detained during Saturday’s National Day celebrations for demonstrating without permission on the National Holiday. The police say that she formed part of a group of five people in the possession of leaflets, placards bearing slogans and a Flemish flag.

Police spokesman Christian De Coninck told flandersnews that the woman was taking part in an unauthorised demonstration. The police spokesman noted that permission for all demonstrations needed to be sought from the local mayor and that in this case this had not been obtained. He also added that no demonstrations are allowed on the National Day.

The police say that the slogans included “Democracy for all Belgians including VL”.

Ms Bubier is married to a Fleming and will be standing in this October’s local elections for the Flemish nationalist party N-VA in her municipality to the south of Brussels.

The incident happened outside Brussels Central railway station on Saturday afternoon. Ms Bubier and the four other members of her group were detained by police for two hours before being released.

She told flandersnews that she and her group had been advised by the Transport Police inside the railway station that they would be detained if the tried to unfold their flag at the military parade.

With this in mind and coupled with the fact that their group was smaller than expected, they decided to return home, but first wanted to take a group photo with the flag outside the station.

Ms Budier adds that before they had the chance to fold up the flag police swooped on them. Handcuffed, the group that included a 70-year-old woman, was led away to the nearest police station.

“They could have just asked us to put the flag away rather than detaining us”, a shocked Ms Baubier told flandersnews.

The photograph illustrating this article comes from our archive.