The Murder of Theo Van Gogh
Wed, Nov 3, 2004 at 12:50:15 pm PST
Eight radical Islamists have been arrested in the investigation into the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh.
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Dutch police have arrested eight suspected Islamic radicals as part of the investigation into the brutal slaying of outspoken filmmaker Theo van Gogh, prosecutors said Wednesday.
The suspects were detained in the 24 hours following Van Gogh’s killing while he bicycled on an Amsterdam street, prosecution spokeswoman Dop Kruimel told The Associated Press.
Six detainees are of Moroccan origin, one is Algerian and the other has dual Spanish-Moroccan nationality, she said.
The suspect in the killing — a 26-year-old suspected Muslim extremist with dual Moroccan-Dutch citizenship — was arrested Tuesday after a shootout with police. The unidentified suspect was wounded in the leg.
Kruimel said the suspects, whose identities were not released, were detained and released during an October 2003 investigation into a potential terrorist threat.
The Dutch are becoming aware of the growing danger they have allowed to take root in their country: Suspected Islamist killing tests Dutch tolerance.
Theo van Gogh, who angered Muslims with a film that said Islam encouraged violence against women, was shot dead on Tuesday. A man with Dutch and Moroccan nationality was arrested for the killing, and suspected of Islamic extremist motives.
Commentators said the murder showed attempts to integrate immigrants had failed and threatened to make race relations worse in a country where 10 percent of the population is defined as “non-Western” foreigners — many Muslim Moroccans and Turks.
“This event shows what kind of climate we have allowed to develop. What kind of people we have allowed in and just allowed to go their own way. How we have much too long just let things go to seed,” sociologist Herman Vuijsje told the Volkskrant daily. ...
Noting that Pim Fortuyn’s murder and that of Van Gogh came 911 days apart — a reference to the U.S. abbreviation for Sept. 11 — De Telegraaf newspaper said lenient immigration policies had turned an open society into a “resentful and intolerant” one.
“Afraid of being called racist, we have been so tolerant with regard to these religious fascists that they have been allowed to merrily undermine the roots of our freedom,” it said. ...
A survey last week showed that a majority of Dutch said they expected to no longer feel at home in their own neighbourhood in five years due to the rising number of foreigners. In the three biggest cities, immigrants make up about a third of the population and form a majority among young people.
Frank says:
