Joesoef
09-11-04, 13:03
Dutch Look for Qaeda Link After Killing of Filmmaker
By CRAIG S. SMITH
MSTERDAM, Nov. 6 - Five days after a Dutch-Moroccan man killed the outspoken filmmaker Theo van Gogh in broad daylight here, intelligence officials say they are investigating a possible international dimension to what many people see as the country's first Islamic terrorist attack.
While intelligence officials caution that there is no evidence to prove that the suspect in Mr. van Gogh's killing was part of a larger organization, they have focused on his past association with people who are suspected of plotting bombings and may have links to terrorist networks abroad.
"There are links to the transnational Al Qaeda network," said Vincent van Steen, a Dutch intelligence official. "But it is hard to say how extensive they are."
Mr. van Gogh's killing has shaken this country of 16 million people and alarmed the government, which is already facing death threats against some of its politicians, including two legislators who have been moved to safe houses. Many people argue that the Netherlands, arguably Europe's most tolerant society, has become a staging ground for Islamic terrorist activity and one node in a loose militant network stretching across Europe and North Africa.
Muhammad Bouyeri, 26, the Dutch-Moroccan who is accused of cutting Mr. van Gogh's throat after first shooting him repeatedly, had come to the attention of Dutch intelligence officials earlier when they were investigating a younger Dutch-Moroccan man, Samir Azzouz. Both moved among five apartments in the city's western suburbs frequented by Islamic radicals, and Dutch newspapers have reported that the two men were seen in each other's company.
Mr. Azzouz, now 18, became known to the police nearly two years ago when he was stopped in Ukraine while trying to reach Chechnya, saying he wanted to join an Islamic war against Russia.
He returned to the Netherlands, but was arrested again with four men in October 2003 on suspicion of plotting a terrorist attack after the Dutch intelligence service intercepted "coded communications" between the men arrested and a Moroccan in Spain identified as Naoufel.
Intelligence officials say Naoufel is suspected of involvement in the suicide bombings in Casablanca, Morocco, that killed 45 people last year. Mr. Azzouz was found with ingredients that could have been used in a bomb, the Dutch authorities say.
Mr. Azzouz and his associates were eventually released because of lack of evidence, but he was rearrested in June 2003 with more complete bomb-making ingredients and maps and floor plans of the country's only nuclear power plant, as well as Schiphol Airport near Amsterdam, the Parliament, the Defense Ministry and several other public buildings in The Hague. He is in prison awaiting trial.
Mr. Bouyeri grew up in a five-story apartment block studded with satellite dishes in Amsterdam's Slotervaart suburb, a district of low-rise buildings set among parks and lakes. The suburb was built on reclaimed marshland during the 1950's and 1960's to give postwar industrial workers a more spacious, greener living environment.
By most accounts, Mr. Bouyeri was a studious and responsible young man who graduated from high school, worked in a local community center and acted as a youth counselor. But many acquaintances say he changed after his mother died of breast cancer two years ago.
His faith deepened after his mother's death, according to those accounts. The largest newspaper in the Netherlands, Telegraaf, reported that he twice visited Saudi Arabia, an increasingly popular path for the country's disaffected Moroccan youths rediscovering their religion.
Mr. Bouyeri began wearing Arab robes and moved out of his family's home, renting a one-bedroom garden apartment in a two-story building on Marianne Philips Street about two miles away, the Telegraaf reported.
That apartment was one of five that the new Dutch national investigation department became aware of during their investigation of Mr. Azzouz. Neighbors say the ground-floor apartment and an identical one next door, both intended for single occupancy, became home to several young Moroccan men and was visited by many more.
"They came and went every day until two in the morning, all dressed in traditional robes," Tiny Reyne, who lives in an adjacent apartment.
All five apartments associated with the men were raided after Mr. van Gogh was killed, and eight people found at the addresses were arrested. Four have been released while the rest, including Mr. Bouyeri, have been charged with conspiracy to commit a terrorist offense under a new counterterrorism law. Mr. Bouyeri has also been charged in the killing of Mr. van Gogh.
The men now facing charges and other members of the wider group are suspected of being in touch with some of the 150 to 200 people on the Dutch intelligence service's ever-changing terrorist watch list, mostly men of North African origin, who have ties to Afghanistan or Islamic radicals elsewhere in Europe, intelligence officials said.
"It is not one group; there are several networks," Mr. van Steen said.
Except for Mr. Bouyeri, all of the other men arrested in connection with the killing of Mr. van Gogh are foreigners. Six of the eight originally arrested are Moroccan, one is Algerian and a third is a Moroccan holding a Spanish passport. Another Moroccan was arrested Saturday.
Beyond the link between Mr. Azzouz and the man identified as Naoufel, there are other troubling ties between Spanish-based Moroccan terrorists and the Netherlands.
Among the 18 men Spanish authorities arrested last month in connection with a plot to blow up Spain's main counterterrorism court was a man of Moroccan origin holding a Dutch passport named Abdol Ghaffar Hashemi.
Another suspect arrested in that case, Mourad Yala, had been arrested in the Dutch city of Geleen in April 2003 on suspicion of falsifying passports. He was released this year and deported to Spain.
The Telegraaf reported last month that Spanish investigators believe Mr. Hashemi and Mr. Yala developed technology for converting laptops into time bombs while in the Netherlands.
A third link is the suspected leader of the Spanish group, known as Muhammad Achraf, who is reported to have wired money to accomplices in the Netherlands on several occasions. He was arrested in Switzerland in August and is facing extradition to Spain.
The Netherlands has been a crossroads for Islamic militants in the past: Mohamed Atta, who steered one of the jets into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, is believed to have visited a militant mosque in Eindhoven.
The would-be airline bomber Richard Reid bought the shoes that were later fashioned into bombs in Amsterdam. Also, a French convert to Islam, Jérôme Courtailler, is now serving time in a Dutch jail for helping to plot an attack on the American embassy in Paris while living in Rotterdam.
For years there has been a growing concern that extremists are recruiting warriors from among the disaffected Moroccan youth in the Netherlands. Mr. van Steen said foreigners who fought or trained in Afghanistan and are now living in the Netherlands played a role in the recruitment. "These people are very influential for some radical youngsters, who see them as role models," he said.
In early 2003, 12 Islamic militants were arrested in Rotterdam as suspects in a recruitment campaign for various struggles abroad.
The 12 men were acquitted on technical grounds, but the intelligence service reported at their trial that one of the suspects and other young Islamists had taken scuba diving lessons, raising concerns that the men may have been planning a marine attack similar to the bombing of the American destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000.
There is some evidence that recruits have come forward, intelligence officials say, citing two Dutch citizens of Moroccan descent were killed in 2001 in Kashmir, the contested territory between India and Pakistan. The men, Ahmed el-Bakioli, 22, and Khalidd el-Hassnoui, 21, were from Eindhoven.
Intelligence officials also suspect that young men have been recruited from the Netherlands to join the anti-American insurgency in Iraq.
Little is known publicly about Mr. Bouyeri's activities in the months before he mounted a bicycle with a gun and set off across town to where Mr. van Gogh lived and worked. According to the police and published accounts by witnesses, Mr. Bouyeri rode up beside Mr. van Gogh, who was also on a bicycle, and began shooting at close range. Mr. van Gogh fell from his bicycle but managed to stagger across the street toward the building where he worked before collapsing. Mr. Bouyeri followed him on foot and bent over the dying man to cut his throat. He then stuck a knife into Mr. van Gogh's chest, pinning a five-page letter there, before apparently walking calmly into a nearby park, according the published accounts of witnesses.
Mr. Bouyeri apparently expected to die in a gun battle with the police, shooting at them when they arrived minutes later. He was shot in the leg, however, and taken into custody. A suicide note later found in his pocket called on other Islamic militants to "take up the challenge."
Mosques Singled Out for Arson
THE HAGUE, Nov. 7 (Agence France-Presse) - Three mosques in the Netherlands were singled out in failed arson attempts over the weekend, the ANP news agency reported Sunday, after the killing of Mr. van Gogh.
The police did not say whether they believed the arson attempts were connected to the killing.
Three suspects were arrested as they tried to set fire to An Nasr mosque in the western town of Huizen on Friday night, the police were quoted as saying. Unidentified suspects also tried to set fire to a mosque in Breda in the south, but the fire had petered out by the time the police arrived.
In Rotterdam, a palette was leaned up against the door of the Mevlana mosque and set on fire, but the flames failed to spread.
www.nyt.com
By CRAIG S. SMITH
MSTERDAM, Nov. 6 - Five days after a Dutch-Moroccan man killed the outspoken filmmaker Theo van Gogh in broad daylight here, intelligence officials say they are investigating a possible international dimension to what many people see as the country's first Islamic terrorist attack.
While intelligence officials caution that there is no evidence to prove that the suspect in Mr. van Gogh's killing was part of a larger organization, they have focused on his past association with people who are suspected of plotting bombings and may have links to terrorist networks abroad.
"There are links to the transnational Al Qaeda network," said Vincent van Steen, a Dutch intelligence official. "But it is hard to say how extensive they are."
Mr. van Gogh's killing has shaken this country of 16 million people and alarmed the government, which is already facing death threats against some of its politicians, including two legislators who have been moved to safe houses. Many people argue that the Netherlands, arguably Europe's most tolerant society, has become a staging ground for Islamic terrorist activity and one node in a loose militant network stretching across Europe and North Africa.
Muhammad Bouyeri, 26, the Dutch-Moroccan who is accused of cutting Mr. van Gogh's throat after first shooting him repeatedly, had come to the attention of Dutch intelligence officials earlier when they were investigating a younger Dutch-Moroccan man, Samir Azzouz. Both moved among five apartments in the city's western suburbs frequented by Islamic radicals, and Dutch newspapers have reported that the two men were seen in each other's company.
Mr. Azzouz, now 18, became known to the police nearly two years ago when he was stopped in Ukraine while trying to reach Chechnya, saying he wanted to join an Islamic war against Russia.
He returned to the Netherlands, but was arrested again with four men in October 2003 on suspicion of plotting a terrorist attack after the Dutch intelligence service intercepted "coded communications" between the men arrested and a Moroccan in Spain identified as Naoufel.
Intelligence officials say Naoufel is suspected of involvement in the suicide bombings in Casablanca, Morocco, that killed 45 people last year. Mr. Azzouz was found with ingredients that could have been used in a bomb, the Dutch authorities say.
Mr. Azzouz and his associates were eventually released because of lack of evidence, but he was rearrested in June 2003 with more complete bomb-making ingredients and maps and floor plans of the country's only nuclear power plant, as well as Schiphol Airport near Amsterdam, the Parliament, the Defense Ministry and several other public buildings in The Hague. He is in prison awaiting trial.
Mr. Bouyeri grew up in a five-story apartment block studded with satellite dishes in Amsterdam's Slotervaart suburb, a district of low-rise buildings set among parks and lakes. The suburb was built on reclaimed marshland during the 1950's and 1960's to give postwar industrial workers a more spacious, greener living environment.
By most accounts, Mr. Bouyeri was a studious and responsible young man who graduated from high school, worked in a local community center and acted as a youth counselor. But many acquaintances say he changed after his mother died of breast cancer two years ago.
His faith deepened after his mother's death, according to those accounts. The largest newspaper in the Netherlands, Telegraaf, reported that he twice visited Saudi Arabia, an increasingly popular path for the country's disaffected Moroccan youths rediscovering their religion.
Mr. Bouyeri began wearing Arab robes and moved out of his family's home, renting a one-bedroom garden apartment in a two-story building on Marianne Philips Street about two miles away, the Telegraaf reported.
That apartment was one of five that the new Dutch national investigation department became aware of during their investigation of Mr. Azzouz. Neighbors say the ground-floor apartment and an identical one next door, both intended for single occupancy, became home to several young Moroccan men and was visited by many more.
"They came and went every day until two in the morning, all dressed in traditional robes," Tiny Reyne, who lives in an adjacent apartment.
All five apartments associated with the men were raided after Mr. van Gogh was killed, and eight people found at the addresses were arrested. Four have been released while the rest, including Mr. Bouyeri, have been charged with conspiracy to commit a terrorist offense under a new counterterrorism law. Mr. Bouyeri has also been charged in the killing of Mr. van Gogh.
The men now facing charges and other members of the wider group are suspected of being in touch with some of the 150 to 200 people on the Dutch intelligence service's ever-changing terrorist watch list, mostly men of North African origin, who have ties to Afghanistan or Islamic radicals elsewhere in Europe, intelligence officials said.
"It is not one group; there are several networks," Mr. van Steen said.
Except for Mr. Bouyeri, all of the other men arrested in connection with the killing of Mr. van Gogh are foreigners. Six of the eight originally arrested are Moroccan, one is Algerian and a third is a Moroccan holding a Spanish passport. Another Moroccan was arrested Saturday.
Beyond the link between Mr. Azzouz and the man identified as Naoufel, there are other troubling ties between Spanish-based Moroccan terrorists and the Netherlands.
Among the 18 men Spanish authorities arrested last month in connection with a plot to blow up Spain's main counterterrorism court was a man of Moroccan origin holding a Dutch passport named Abdol Ghaffar Hashemi.
Another suspect arrested in that case, Mourad Yala, had been arrested in the Dutch city of Geleen in April 2003 on suspicion of falsifying passports. He was released this year and deported to Spain.
The Telegraaf reported last month that Spanish investigators believe Mr. Hashemi and Mr. Yala developed technology for converting laptops into time bombs while in the Netherlands.
A third link is the suspected leader of the Spanish group, known as Muhammad Achraf, who is reported to have wired money to accomplices in the Netherlands on several occasions. He was arrested in Switzerland in August and is facing extradition to Spain.
The Netherlands has been a crossroads for Islamic militants in the past: Mohamed Atta, who steered one of the jets into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, is believed to have visited a militant mosque in Eindhoven.
The would-be airline bomber Richard Reid bought the shoes that were later fashioned into bombs in Amsterdam. Also, a French convert to Islam, Jérôme Courtailler, is now serving time in a Dutch jail for helping to plot an attack on the American embassy in Paris while living in Rotterdam.
For years there has been a growing concern that extremists are recruiting warriors from among the disaffected Moroccan youth in the Netherlands. Mr. van Steen said foreigners who fought or trained in Afghanistan and are now living in the Netherlands played a role in the recruitment. "These people are very influential for some radical youngsters, who see them as role models," he said.
In early 2003, 12 Islamic militants were arrested in Rotterdam as suspects in a recruitment campaign for various struggles abroad.
The 12 men were acquitted on technical grounds, but the intelligence service reported at their trial that one of the suspects and other young Islamists had taken scuba diving lessons, raising concerns that the men may have been planning a marine attack similar to the bombing of the American destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000.
There is some evidence that recruits have come forward, intelligence officials say, citing two Dutch citizens of Moroccan descent were killed in 2001 in Kashmir, the contested territory between India and Pakistan. The men, Ahmed el-Bakioli, 22, and Khalidd el-Hassnoui, 21, were from Eindhoven.
Intelligence officials also suspect that young men have been recruited from the Netherlands to join the anti-American insurgency in Iraq.
Little is known publicly about Mr. Bouyeri's activities in the months before he mounted a bicycle with a gun and set off across town to where Mr. van Gogh lived and worked. According to the police and published accounts by witnesses, Mr. Bouyeri rode up beside Mr. van Gogh, who was also on a bicycle, and began shooting at close range. Mr. van Gogh fell from his bicycle but managed to stagger across the street toward the building where he worked before collapsing. Mr. Bouyeri followed him on foot and bent over the dying man to cut his throat. He then stuck a knife into Mr. van Gogh's chest, pinning a five-page letter there, before apparently walking calmly into a nearby park, according the published accounts of witnesses.
Mr. Bouyeri apparently expected to die in a gun battle with the police, shooting at them when they arrived minutes later. He was shot in the leg, however, and taken into custody. A suicide note later found in his pocket called on other Islamic militants to "take up the challenge."
Mosques Singled Out for Arson
THE HAGUE, Nov. 7 (Agence France-Presse) - Three mosques in the Netherlands were singled out in failed arson attempts over the weekend, the ANP news agency reported Sunday, after the killing of Mr. van Gogh.
The police did not say whether they believed the arson attempts were connected to the killing.
Three suspects were arrested as they tried to set fire to An Nasr mosque in the western town of Huizen on Friday night, the police were quoted as saying. Unidentified suspects also tried to set fire to a mosque in Breda in the south, but the fire had petered out by the time the police arrived.
In Rotterdam, a palette was leaned up against the door of the Mevlana mosque and set on fire, but the flames failed to spread.
www.nyt.com