Van Gogh killer gets life

Searchlight, September 2005

Mohamed Bouyeri, the antisemitic Muslim fundamentalist, found guilty of the brutal slaying of controversial filmmaker and columnist Theo van Gogh on 2 November 2004 has said he would do it again if he had the chance. Bouyeri was handed a life sentence in July for Van Gogh's murder and for attempting to kill several police officers and a bystander. He was also convicted for threatening Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen and the right-wing liberal VVD parliamentarian, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The authorities now wants to prosecute Bouyeri, in a separate case, for belonging to a terrorist group, the so-called "Hofstadgroup", whose alleged aims were to stage, among other things, attacks on the parliament and government buildings in the Hague and to kill the right-wing anti-Muslim parliamentarian Geert Wilders (former VVD) and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Meanwhile, the Dutch secret service (AIVD) has claimed, in a report released on 12 July, that racist so-called "Lonsdale youth" are often not extreme. The discrepancy laden report was ordered by justice minister Piet Hein Donner and internal affairs minister Johan Remkes after a second arson attack on an Islamic school in Uden and incidents in Venray involving white racist youth wearing "Lonsdale" gear and Turkish youngsters. The AIVD contends that growing racism among youngsters is worrying "because it is not based on an ideology". At the same time, it states, contradictorily, that if frequent clashes between white racist youth and migrant Dutch youth continue 'it can have severe consequences for social cohesion".

By Jeroen Bosch of Alert! and Antifa-Net in Utrecht