Posted on 03/12/2006 6:50:59 PM PST by Boot Hill
© 2006 The Associated Press
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — Dutch judges convicted nine men Friday of belonging to a terrorist group, a landmark verdict that concludes promoting a violent version of Islam can itself be an act of terrorism.
The case opens a new way for prosecutors to stop potential terrorists and for the Netherlands to tackle the broader problem of the spread of radicalism among Muslim youth.
Lawyers for the men said they will appeal.
Two men received 15- and 13-year prison terms for attempted murder after a clash with police during their arrest. One received a five-year term for possessing a loaded machine gun.
The rest were sentenced to up to two years in prison. All were found to have spread hateful propaganda among their friends and on the Internet, encouraging Muslims to join a holy war against the West.
Though most sentences were short, the judgment was sweeping.
"Anyone who preaches hate and violence lays the basis for committing crimes directed at instilling fear among the people and destroying Dutch democracy," said Judge Rene Elkerbout, reading the three-judge panel's ruling.
"This is what the suspects contributed to. The court weighs that heavily against them."
The convictions were won on the basis of new legislation giving law enforcement agencies more power to investigate terrorist suspects, including wiretapping, and raising the penalties for terrorism-related crimes.
Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende praised "police and prosecutors for getting a conviction."
"This shows that the new laws we've passed are having an effect," he said at his weekly news briefing. Membership in a terrorist organization was made a crime in a law that took effect in August 2004.
"It's the first time a group has been found to be a criminal organization with a terrorist intent, and the suspects got heavier sentences because of that," said prosecution spokesman Wim de Bruin.
The convicted men, known as the Hofstad Group, included Mohammed Bouyeri, who already is serving a life sentence for the 2004 murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh.
The murder shook the Netherlands, once renowned for its peacefulness and tolerance, and led to a wave of violence in which mosques and churches were destroyed in retaliatory attacks.
Bouyeri was found guilty of being a ringleader of the group, but judges could add nothing to his sentence.
Two Dutch Muslims, Ismael Aknikh and Jason Walters, received the heaviest sentences for throwing a hand grenade during their arrest on Nov. 10, 2004, which injured five policemen. Walters, a convert to Islam, is the son of a U.S. soldier and a Dutch mother.
The Interior Ministry says the two are among 150 radical Muslims in the Netherlands capable of carrying out terrorist attacks. It estimates several thousand other youths are sympathetic to militant causes and susceptible to being recruited.
Muslims make up around 6 percent of the Dutch population.
Prosecutors had argued the Hofstad group was terrorist in nature because in its vision of Islam, violence is the ultimate goal.
But the court rejected that reasoning. Drawing conclusions that the prosecutors had never argued, the judges said the group must be considered a terrorist organization because it "incited violence, or spread hate or threats" against non-Muslims.
They cited as an example the message Bouyeri had impaled in Van Gogh's corpse with a knife. It threatened Dutch politicians with death and Western governments with destruction.
Similar texts were found in possession of other group members, in which "the killing of nonbelievers in general and some politicians in particular is directly discussed," the ruling said.
"In addition, they talk about the great fear that this will cause. There can be no other conclusion than that these are murder threats with a terrorist intent, namely the destruction of political and constitutional structures and inspiring great fear in the populace," the ruling said.
Group members attended cult-like meetings at Bouyeri's home under the guidance of a spiritual leader, Redouan al-Issar, who fled the country shortly before Van Gogh's murder and is now believed to be in jail in Syria.
Defense lawyer Ronald van der Horst called the judgment "scandalous." He said, by the judges' reasoning "you can be imprisoned for many years simply for having papers that the authorities say you shouldn't have."
Van der Horst, who represented Aknikh, said that other than Bouyeri, the defendants had no link with Van Gogh's killing and were just a loosely knit group of friends.
But Geert Wilders, an anti-immigration politician who was threatened in Bouyeri's letter, said the ruling didn't go far enough.
"This is a judgment befitting a banana republic: very weak and unacceptable," he said, adding that judges "don't understand the threat posed by Muslim extremism."
ping
this, on top of the possible (if unlikely) lawsuit attempting the illegalization of the Koran in Germany, sure is interesting
You might be. I've come to think this is why liberal/libertarian societies make perfect hosts for Islamoparasitism. Moral equivalency.
"Though most sentences were short", says it all. The Dutch are finished. The Muslim population of Holland is 6%, I was under the impression that at 15% they would have had enough political and social clout to call the shots. I was mistaken. The demographics of the native Dutch (dismal), combined with the flight of the young and skilled, along with the monied, will seal the fate of the Dutch in short order.
Would you live in a country where your politicians, film makers, writers and publishers are in hiding or under protection from a mere fraction of 6% of the population and your government is all but powerless to respond?
With Muslims, half measures don't work. It'll get worse until the Dutch boot them out wholesale. All of the EU needs to do this. Of course, Algeria or Morocco or wherever won't take them all back, but Syria has a few spare beds.
Try to find a non-violent version of Islam.
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