Free Republic

THE HAGUE, 18/03/09 - Two out of three serious teenage criminals are children of parents born outside the Netherlands. In most cases, no prison sentence is imposed, it emerges from a study sent to parliament by Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin. In the research, 447 case files of youngsters aged from 12 to 17 were studied. All the files involved cases in which the perpetrator was convicted of a crime for which the maximum jail sentence is 8 years or more. These were murder, manslaughter, robbery with violence, extortion, arson, public acts of violence and sexual crimes. Only just over...

It appears that the freedom to be critical of Islam is not supported in either the United States or the Netherlands. AMSTERDAM: The Web site on which the Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders was promoting his film, which is said to be critical of the Koran, has been suspended by its U.S. hosting service. The site formerly showed the film's title, "Fitna" ("Coming Soon"), and an image of a gilded Koran. Now it shows a note that the U.S. company, Network Solutions, is investigating whether the site violates its terms of service. "Network Solutions has received a number of complaints regarding...

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — Dutch police have arrested a Muslim man suspected of preparing a suicide attack, officials said Thursday. The prosecutor's office said only that the 22-year-old man is a Muslim of Moroccan ancestry, but did not release his name. He recorded a farewell message to his family on an audio cassette and was "presumably recruited and prepared to be sent out to die in international 'jihad,' or armed struggle against 'enemies of Islam,'" according to a statement by prosecutors. A second man was detained but later released, it said. The two were picked up in the southern city...

EINDHOVEN, The Netherlands - A member of the Hamburg terrorist cell that planned the Sept. 11 terror attacks visited this southern Dutch town a number of times before the attacks, said German and Dutch authorities. The Dutch secret service also confirmed yesterday that German authorities were investigating the trail of money that flowed through here from Saudi Arabia to finance possible terrorism operations. A spokesman in the German federal prosecutor's office declined to comment, and it is not clear whether a link has been established between the suspected Hamburg cell member, Mounir el-Motassadeq, who is on trial in Germany, and...