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October 16, 2006

Netherlands: Seven Muslims Stand Trial On Terror Charges

The character at left is 20-year old Samir Azzouz, the notorious Dutch Islamist, in the "farewell video" he recorded last year. It was broadcast on September 14 on Dutch TV station NOVA.

It was this broadcast which led to the arrest of Azzouz and three others on Friday, October 18 last year, from Amsterdam, the Hague and Almere.

Before his arrest in October, Azzouz had apparently been trying to obtain explosives and weapons. Azzouz had been under surveilance since 2003, when he returned from Chechnya. He and another individual had tried to join Islamists fighting the Russians in January of that year, but both had been turned back at the border.

In October 2003, Azzouz had been arrested with four other individuals, suspected of planning a terrorist attack on Dutch soil. He was set free. He was arrested again in July 2004. During the arrest, machine gun cartridges, a bullet-proof vest, two fake bombs, a silencer and maps were recovered from his home. He was sent to trial in Rotterdam in 2005, and convicted of possessing illegal arms. A further charge, that of plotting to attack public buildings, fell through. Having spent time in jail, his three month sentence was considered "used up". He was acquitted on April 6, 2006.

Azzouz, now aged 20, is of Moroccan descent. He was arrested as part of an operation called "Operation Piranha". Other suspects from this surveillance are linked to the Hofstad Group. This group, named after a slang name for the Hague, included Mohamed Bouyeri, the man who slaughtered filmmaker Theo van Gogh on November 2, 2004, for offending Muslim "sensibilities" in his film about Islam's abuse of women, called Submission.

On September 4 this year, 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 discovered in a basement in a housing complex in the Hague.

Today, Samir Azzouz and the six others who were arrested in October last year began their trial. The news is carried by Expatica and by Associated Press via CNN. Those on trial are six males and one woman.

When Azzouz was acquitted last year of serious charges, the Netherlands government introduced new laws. These included crimes of membership of a terrorist organization and "recruiting for a terrorist network". Azzouz is being charged under both of these counts.

His defense lawyer, Victor Koppe, says Azzouz is innocent and is being tried because the authorities are prejudiced against him.

Already, the prosecution has suffered a blow, states Expatica, because forensic examinations of the guns which were found in the basement in the Hague on September 4 have yielded no evidence of a physical link to Samir Azzouz, even though the gun pictured in his "farewell video" has a strong resemblance to the Scorpion 61 which was recovered. The defense said there was no forensic link, and this was confirmed by the prosecution on Friday (October 13).

The trial is being held in the high security Amsterdam-Osdorp court, and is expected to last for three weeks.

The prosecution believes that the guns belong to the terror cell which Azzouz is thought to belong to. A woman who lived in an apartment in the housing complex where they were found, Soumaya S., is the wife of Nourridine El Fatmi, aka Faoud. El Fatmi was sentenced on March 10 this year to five years' imprisonment for possessing a submachine gun in Amsterdam in June of last year.

Azzouz grew up on the same block in Amsterdam as Mohamed Bouyeri, the member of the Hofstad Group who murdered Theo van Gogh.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at October 16, 2006 9:20 AM

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