Last week, police in Morocco arrested Mohamed Johri, the youngest of the three, whose girlfriend, Lesley Deckers, had helped organise the rental helicopter the trio used in their daring jailbreak.

Since Johri has Moroccan nationality, the Rabat government will not extradite him to Belgium. Instead, he will be tried in Morocco on charges of car-jacking and armed robbery.

Decker and another man rented the helicopter in Diksmuide on 23 July and forced the pilot to land in the exercise yard of Bruges prison. The three gangsters boarded the aircraft, but it was too heavy to take off, so one of the hijackers was left behind. He remains in custody. Escaping from prison is not in itself a criminal offence in Belgium, but aiding and abetting someone else is.

The second of the three, Abdelhaq Melloul-Khayari, was arrested last week in Molenbeek in Brussels, apparently on the point of fleeing to Morocco. He is back in Bruges.

But Johri, together with ringleader Ashraf Sekkaki, can look forward to a long stay in a Moroccan jail. Sekkaki, 26, already has a formidable record of armed robberies, as well as a previous escape. He was discovered staying with family in the town of Al Hoceima, a port city set among the Rif mountains. On 6 August, he was involved in a road accident in the area. Police gave chase, but he escaped on foot, despite an injury, into the mountains.

Johri was also picked up on 6 August, living with relatives in the town of Berkane, further to the east. Both men are suspected of having taken part in at least four armed robberies during their brief flight from justice, which netted them an estimated €100,000.

Both Johri and Sekkaki are thought to have entered Morocco by ferry from Spain at the port of Nador, just south of the Spanish enclave of Melilla. Moroccan police say that the two men went to Berkane and stayed overnight in a hotel; in the morning, Johri was arrested and Sekkaki fled. It is not clear why Sekkaki would not go immediately to where his own family lives, but, according to some reports, his mother is currently on holiday.

The Bruges prosecutor will deliver case files to judicial authorities in Morocco, where both men will be tried. Johri had about three years left to serve in Bruges. "A Moroccan judge will try him for the hijacking of the helicopter and the four bank robberies in which he is alleged to have been involved," said the prosecutor's spokesperson. That's likely to earn him a sentence far exceeding three years - which he will also still have to serve if he ever sets foot in Belgium again.

The Moroccan Prisons Observatory (OMP) has described Morocco's prisons as overcrowded and unsanitary, paying little attention to human rights of prisoners or to international incarceration standards. Staff are underpaid and prone to corruption, buildings are run-down, and institutions are mostly indifferent to complaints.

Now that the three men are back under lock and key, the only remaining question is, what has happened to Lesley Deckers? As Flanders Today went to press, the Flemish-born, 24-year-old from Hoboken, who converted to Islam in 2004, was still at large, and police admitted they had no trace of her whereabouts. They did, however, express confidence that she was still alive and unharmed.