Al Qaeda in Europe

by Lorenzo Vidino

  Ben Amar, a Dutch Muslim of Moroccan descent who had set up a nonprofit organization following 9/11 to counter the negative image of Muslims in Holland, is also accused of mishandling other material. According to Dutch prosecutors, he leaked a document listing AIVD's antiterrorism investigations to an Utrecht-based group of Moroccans suspected of possessing explosives.33 And those investigating Ben Amar's past activities believe that he may have provided an illegal Turkish immigrant with a residence permit when he was working in the Department of Immigration and Naturalization.34 The ability of Hofstad group to take advantage of a mole inside Dutch intelligence is particularly disturbing and shows the magnitude of Holland's problem.

  Familiar with Dutch language and culture and plugged into the international jihadi network, the Hofstad group thought globally and acted locally. Members spent hours chatting online about the evils of Dutch society and providing authorities with hints of their future plans. These young men were, on average age, in their early twenties; one of the more interesting was Jason Walters. The son of an African American father who worked at the Soesterberg US Air Force Base and a native Dutch mother, Walters grew up in the Netherlands, a quiet and lonely boy whose dreams were simple: "Married with two children," wrote Walters in his high school yearbook. "And a nice job and a nice house." At sixteen, Walters visited a Dutch mosque and quickly converted to Islam, changing his name to Jamal. Within a few months, he traveled to Pakistan and perhaps Afghanistan. Once back, he was the quintessential militant, fighting with officials of a local mosque he deemed too moderate and forbidding his mother and sisters to drink alcohol or even watch television.35

  Jason Walters was eighteen when he was arrested with other members of the Hofstad group in October 2003; he had been under surveillance for months.36 Authorities confiscated his computer and found worrying messages on its hard drive. Walters was an active member of several Internet chat rooms, and in some of them he had talked about killing prominent members of the Dutch political establishment. After bragging with his chat partner about the training he had received in Afghanistan, Walters (under the alias "Mujaheed") mentioned a "death list" of people he wanted to kill, including member of parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prime Minister Jan Balkenende, and other prominent ministers of the Dutch government.37 Despite these menacing words, Walters, like Azzouz and the others detained, was released by Dutch authorities.

  In retrospect, the words of Walters sound ominously prophetic. On November 2, 2004, shortly before 9 AM, the controversial and provocative Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was riding his bicycle on his normal morning route from his house to his production company. On the bike path along Linnaeusstraat, a boulevard in central Amsterdam, a man who appeared to be North African and who was wearing a traditional Arab robe passed him, stopped in the middle of the path, and shot at him four times. Van Gogh ran across the street but his attacker chased him, shooting him again from a close distance while the filmmaker was begging for mercy. In broad daylight, the man pulled out a large butcher knife, stabbed van Gogh several times, and tried without success to behead him. After pinning a letter to the filmmaker's chest with a smaller knife, the attacker calmly reloaded his weapon and walked to a nearby park, which was cordoned off by police agents called to the scene by witnesses. After firing at the police and at bystanders, the man was shot in the leg and taken into custody.38

  The gruesome and ritualistic killing of van Gogh shocked the Netherlands, one of Europe's most peaceful and tolerant societies, yet it could have been foreseen. Theo van Gogh, a descendant of the nineteenthcentury painter, was an outspoken critic of Islam; using the same straightforward language in which he also attacked Judaism and Christianity, he accused Islam of being a backward religion. Van Gogh had come under fire after the broadcast of a short TV movie titled Submission that he had directed. The film, which aimed at exposing the sufferings of women under Islam, had been written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born Muslim member of the Dutch parliament who has openly criticized Islam's treatment of women and the reluctance of most Muslim immigrants to integrate into Dutch society. One scene that particularly outraged Holland's Islamists shows Quranic verses justifying violence against women written on the naked body of a young woman, and both Hirsi Ali and van Gogh received numerous death threats.

  It was predictable that a member of the Hofstad group would take it upon himself to punish van Gogh for his "offenses" against Islam. The perpetrator of the brutal assassination, Mohammed Bouyeri, was indeed a member of the Hofstad group, and authorities had been surveilling him for months. After chatting online about targeting prominent figures in Dutch public life, the group had finally decided to go into action and attack van Gogh, who had refused police protection.

  Dutch intelligence had been aware of Bouyeri for years, though they paid him no particular attention; he was not considered to be one of the one hundred fifty most dangerous Islamists operating in the Netherlands. Bouyeri was known to be a close associate of Akoudad and Azzouz,39 and the group regularly met in his small Amsterdam apartment. He was also the owner of the Volkswagen Golf used by three members of the Hofstad group to travel to Portugal in June 2004.40 Bouyeri had been questioned in October 2003, when Dutch authorities first moved against the group, but, like everyone else, he was immediately released. Just as had happened in Madrid with Jamal Zougam, an individual under surveillance who was considered a marginal figure in a wider network executed the attack.

  Mohammed Bouyeri was the son of Moroccan immigrants; born in 1978, he grew up in the predominantly immigrant neighborhood of Slotervaart, a western suburb of Amsterdam where Muslims outnumber native Dutch residents. He was an average student at the local high school with many friends in the neighborhood. Before his conversion to radical Islam, Bouyeri gave signs of an internal conflict. He tried to fit into Dutch society, organizing soccer games between local youths and police officials and volunteering at a local community center; he lobbied local authorities and even the national parliament to obtain funding for the construction of a larger center.41 At the same time, he had a rebellious side. According to media reports, in November 1997 Bouyeri was involved in a heated discussion with police officers outside of an Amsterdam coffee shop. After threatening the officers he was given a five-hundred-guilder fine. The incident caused Bouyeri to lose a position as a security guard at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport for which he had applied. Bouyeri had already begun his training when the police told the security firm about the incident and other unspecified but "well-known and relevant facts" that made Bouyeri an unfit candidate.42 In June 2000, Bouyeri was involved in a fight in a bar, but he was not arrested. One year later, when four police agents were trying to arrest him after he had hit a fifth officer, he threatened them with a knife. He was sentenced to twelve weeks in jail.43

  Some of his friends believe it was in jail that Bouyeri embraced radical Islam. Others claim that the attacks of 9/11 shocked him and deep ened his faith. The death of his mother in 2002 also had a strong impact on him. By late 2002 Bouyeri had become a fundamentalist, growing a beard and wearing a djellaba and a skullcap rather than jeans and a Tshirt. His changed views caused friction at the community center, as he opposed the sale of alcoholic beverages and discouraged women from participating in the center's events.44 He also began to worship regularly at Amsterdam's al Tawheed mosque, where he met Azzouz and other members of the Hofstad group. By August 2003 he stopped going to the center; shortly thereafter, he moved from Slotervaart to a small one-bedroom apartment in another district of Amsterdam.41

  The files from his computer analyzed by Dutch intelligence after his arrest trace Bouyeri's shift to extremism. The e-mails that Bouyeri sent to his Dutch girlfriend before 9/11 are typical of any young European man, who complains about his inability to afford Reebok sneakers and is excited because a store featuring his favorite brand of ice cream, Haagen Dazs, is in his neighborhood. But as Frits van Straelen, the Dutch magistrate who prosecuted Bouyeri, said, "It is on the Internet that his radica
lization took place: in the story of Mohamed Bouyeri the influence of the `online jihad' counts more than anything else." After 9/11 and his mother's death, Bouyeri visited Islamic sites and posted frequently in radical chat rooms. On a Web site he painted Holland red and drew a flag inscribed with the Islamic sword and the phrase "Victory is ours." He added the faces of Hirsi Ali and Theo van Gogh, writing, "The infidels attack us, but they will be defeated."46

  After moving away from Slotervaart, Bouyeri lost touch with his friends from the neighborhood and began to spend time only with his new friends from the mosque. He dropped out of the polytechnic where he had been studying accounting and began collecting unemployment benefits.47 The apartment that Bouyeri shared with other radicals became one of the meeting points of the Hofstad group. Following a common pattern, the Hofstad group took shape at a mosque (the al Tawheed and others throughout Holland) and then, when its radicalism and level of involvement with illegal activities became too pronounced, it left the mosque to meet in members' residences. And like many other clusters, the young Dutch Muslims formed a terrorist cell once they fell under the tutelage of experienced jihadis.

  Though the members of the Hofstad group were, on average, very young, it had a few older and charismatic leaders. As noted above, Azzouz attempted to travel to Chechnya with a thirty-six-year-old veteran of Bosnia, Abdelaziz Beniyach. Other members of the group had close contacts with Abdeladim Akoudad, a man with ties to senior al Qaeda operatives." After Beniyach and Akoudad left the Netherlands, the group's guide was a forty-three-year-old Syrian named Reduoane al Issar, whom the group called Abu Khaled. Al Issar, a former member of the Syrian army, had shuttled between Germany and Holland for almost ten years before becoming the undisputed spiritual leader of the Hofstad group, teaching the young men about the importance of jihad and the beauty of martyrdom.49 When Dutch authorities clamped down on the group in October 2003, al Issar was deported to Germany but he managed to reenter the Netherlands, thanks to the absence of border controls between the countries.so

  Under the influence of al Issar, Bouyeri, Azzouz, and Walters quickly were wholly caught up in the group and its murderous goals. The men spent days chatting online and meeting in various apartments in Amsterdam, The Hague, and Rotterdam. As Dutch authorities continued to keep a close eye on them, the militants held nightlong meetings where they watched cassettes of mujahideen endeavors and listened to tapes of radical scholars. Neighbors reported seeing dozens of young Muslim men at Bouyeri's Amsterdam apartment: "They came and went every day until two in the morning, all dressed in traditional robes."51 Dutch authorities also monitored the online activities of the group. While Walters was expressing his desire to decapitate members of Holland's political elite, Bouyeri focused his anger on the events in Iraq, declaring that American troops deserved to be beheaded.52

  In the wake of the assassination, the Dutch Interior and Justice Ministries published a joint letter defending their failure to anticipate it, asserting that "The information about [Bouyeri] that the intelligence services received did not alter the image they had of him that he was not a key figure in the network. Up until the attacks on Van Gogh the intelligence services had no information that indicated that [Bouyeri] was preparing a violent action."53 Yet officials had repeatedly received hints of Bouyeri's nature, as he had been detained for minor violent crimes on various occasions. When Bouyeri and one of his roommates, Noureddine El Fathni, were arrested in October 2003, the search of their apartment turned up a "martyr's testament" under El Fathni's name. Questioned, El Fathni told investigators that the testament was Bouyeri's. Unable to ascertain the truth and having no recourse under Dutch law, authorities had to release El Fathni, Bouyeri, and the other men.54

  Moreover, on September 29, 2004, Bouyeri was detained after he attacked transportation officials who caught him riding a tram without a ticket. Taken to the Amsterdam West police station, he kept spitting at the officers who were interrogating him. In his pockets, police found a note in which Bouyeri praised the beheadings of Westerners by Zarqawi in Iraq; he was also carrying the addresses of other known members of the Hofstad group. The police could do nothing more than book him and release him by evening. As he left, he shouted, "I hate you! I hate you! Sooner or later I will kill some of you!"55 Five weeks later he kept his word and murdered Theo van Gogh.

  Bouyeri's deep radicalism is evident in the martyr's testament that he carried with him when he killed Theo van Gogh. The letter, titled "Baptized in Blood," showed Bouyeri's desire to die as martyr: "So these are my last words.... Riddled with bullets.... Baptized in blood.... As I had hoped."56 Even more chilling words were written on the five-page letter he pinned to Van Gogh's body after killing him. This "Open letter to Hirshi Ali" is a long string of invective against the Somali-born intellectual and her alleged apostasy:

  Since your entrance into the political arena of Holland you have been constantly terrorizing Muslims and Islam with your words. You are not the first and you won't be the last to join the crusade against Islam.

  With your apostasy, you have not only turned your back on the truth, but you also march along the ranks of the soldiers of evil. You mince no words about your hostility against Islam, and for this your masters have rewarded you with a seat in parliament. They have found in you a companion in their crusade against Islam and Muslims. A companion that gives them the "gunpowder" so they don't have to do the dirty work.

  After accusing Hirsi Ali at length of hating Islam, Bouyeri concluded his letter with ominous threats:

  Islam will conquer by the blood of the martyrs. It will spread its light to every corner of this Earth and it will, if necessary, drive evil to its dark hole by the sword.

  This unleashed battle is different from previous battles. The unbelieving fundamentalists have started it and Insha Allah the true believers will end it.

  There shall be no mercy for the unjust, only the sword raised at them. No discussion, no demonstrations, no parades, no petitions; merely DEATH will separate the Truth from the LIE....

  I deem thee lost, 0 America.

  I deem thee lost, 0 Europe.

  I deem thee lost, 0 Holland.

  I deem thee lost, 0 Hirshi Ali.

  I deem thee lost, 0 unbelieving fundamentalist.57

  As Dutch police identified Bouyeri and examined his testament and the letter he had pinned on van Gogh, they rushed to the five apartments where the Hofstad group used to meet and arrested eight individuals.58 Early in the morning of November 10, police officers attempted to raid an apartment house in a quiet working-class neighborhood of The Hague; they were looking for two suspects connected to the Hofstad group, Ismail Aknikh (the man whose telephone number had been found in possession of Abdelkader Hakimi in Belgium and Abdeladim Akoudad in Spain) and Jason Walters, the teenage son of an American airman. "We will decapitate you," the two shouted, throwing a hand grenade at the officers and injuring four.59 It was the beginning of a drawn-out siege that led Dutch authorities to evacuate five blocks around the house and to ban air traffic over The Hague. Fourteen hours later, after the intervention of Dutch Special Forces, the radicals barricaded inside the house surrendered and were arrested.60 Jason Walters's brother Jermaine was arrested a few hours later in Amersfoort.61

  A total of fifteen members of the Hofstad group, excluding Bouyeri, have been arrested and charged in a Rotterdam court with various crimes following van Gogh's assassination.62 Many of them, whose ages at the time they were apprehended ranged from eighteen to twenty-seven, possessed copies of the letter that Bouyeri had pinned on the filmmaker's body and handbooks on how to perform murders according to Islamic rituals. Some of them had received military training in Pakistan and were recorded in intercepted phone calls discussing slaying infidels like "sacrificial lambs."63 Authorities are certain that the group was planning follow-up operations targeting Ayaan Hirsi Ali; the Dutch politician Geert Wilders; Amsterdam's mayor, Job Cohen; and the city's Moroccan-born alderman, Ahmed Aboutaleb.64 In June of 200
5, Amsterdam police arrested Noureddine El Fathni, Bouyeri's former roommate, and found him in possession of a fully-loaded machine pistol and loose ammunition. El Fathni, who had been briefly arrested twice before (but always released), is now believed to be a key member of the Hoftsad and of having facilitated the escape of Issar from the Netherlands .15

  But even if the arrested members of the Hofstad group are convicted, others are ready to replace them. Authorities estimate that the group contained more than fifty members and that there are at least a few hundred radical Islamists living in the Netherlands.66 And the next attack might be carried out by a woman. In February 2005, the Dutch newspaper Volkskrant interviewed three women, Naima, Fatima, and Khadisja, who claimed to be members of the Hofstad group. The women were adamant in their determination to carry on the jihad that the men had begun. And as one of them-Naima, the wife of Mohammed el Murabit, one of the men on trial in Rotterdam observed-"If Hirsi Ali is murdered by a woman it would have a much larger impact." Authorities are well aware of the women's intentions. Shortly after the assassination of van Gogh, a young Muslim woman showed up at the Dutch parliament asking to discuss with Hirsi Ali a book she was carrying. The book, The True Muslim, had been written by Mohammed Bouyeri under a pseudonym. Authorities suspect that the woman might have been a member of the group attempting to attack the legislator. "She will not escape her punishment: death," Naima told the Volkskrant reporters. "Even if it takes ten years."67

  Confirming the important role played by females in the Hofstad group, when Noureddine El Fathni was arrested in June 2005, he was accompanied by two women, his wife, Soumaya S., and twenty-six-year-old Dutch convert Martine van den Oever. The two women, who are close friends, are accused of being deeply involved in the group's activities. At the moment of her arrest Martine van den Oever, who had converted to Islam in high school and had progressively radicalized, was found in possession of a farewell letter in which she asked her friend Soumaya S. to inform her mother in case she died or something happened to her.68 And authorities believe that Soumaya S. had tried to obtain the private addresses of prominent Dutch politicians.69 Reportedly, on the day of their arrest, her husband Noureddine El Fathni was found in possession of what authorities call a "death list" with the names, among others, of Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner and People's Party leader Jozias van Aartsen.70