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September 7, 2006
Netherlands: Weapons Discovered, Linked To Muslim Terror Group
News from ANP via Expatica relates that two guns have been discovered in the basement of a residential complex in the Hague, in the Netherlands.
The police have arrested one of the residents in the complex, who has been named only as "Soumaya S." She is the wife of Nourridine El Fatmi, aka Faoud, who was sentenced on March 10 this year to five years' jail for possessing a submachine gun in Amsterdam in June of last year. El Fatmi was a member of the Dutch terror group known as the "Hofstad Group", after a slang term for the Hague. A principal member of the group was Mohamed Bouyeri, who notoriously murdered the film-maker Theo van Gogh on November 2 2004.
The guns were discovered on Monday (Sept 4), after the cellar area became flooded. When a company was hired to pump out water, they discovered the weapons, which were concealed in plastic bags. Inside the bage were handwritten documents written in Arabic. The guns were a Czech-made CZ Scorpion 61 submachine pistol and a Smith & Wesson handgun. Two ammunition clips and 300 conical tipped bullets for the submachine pistol were also discovered.
The police who arrested Faoud's wife were connected to Operation Piranha, which had had been monitoring terrorists. Witnesses had spoken of three guns kept "in a bag". It appears that Faoud had been found with the third gun.
Suspicions are now falling on Samir Azzouz (pictured), who is currently in custody on suspicion of trying to procure firearms and planning terrorist attacks. He will appear in court on 16 October. According to police, the Scorpion 61 bears a "great similarity" to a gun which was shown in the background of a video made by Azzouz, described below. Azzouz has ties with the Hofstad Group and is thought to have led his own terror cell.
On October 14 last year, Samir Azzouz, then aged 19, was arrested, along with other suspects who belonged to the Islamist "Hofstad Group". What had triggered the arrests had been the discovery of a "farewell video" Azzouz had made. The video led members of Dutch intelligence to assume he plotted to carry out an attack, and the video was intended to be a testament.
In January 2003, according to Radio Netherlands, Azzouz had attempted with another person to enter Chechnya in 2003. Russian police stopped him from crossing at the border, and sent him home. From that time onwards, Azzouz had been under surveillance from AIVD, the Dutch intelligence agency.
In October 2003, Azzouz and four others were detained on suspicion of planning an attack. He was set free. He was again arrested in July 2004, and machine-gun cartridges, a bullet-proof vest, two fake bombs, a silencer and maps were found at his home. He was sentenced for illegal ownership of weapons for only three months jail at a Rotterdam court in 2005. However, not enough hard evidence remained to convict him of plotting bomb atrocities. Having spent time in jail, his three month sentence was considered "used up". He was acquitted on April 6.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at September 7, 2006 11:49 PM
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