Mon Dec 5, 2005
By Wendel Broere

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A group of suspected Islamists, including the jailed killer of a Dutch filmmaker, watched films of beheadings, a court heard as they went on trial on Monday for plotting attacks and belonging to a terrorist group.

Dutch police arrested the 14 men after the murder of Theo van Gogh last November by Mohammed Bouyeri, who shot and stabbed the filmmaker before slashing his throat, an act prosecutors said at his trial in July "evoked beheadings in the Middle East, Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq".

Prosecutors suspect Bouyeri, now serving life in jail, held meetings in his home for the group, who they say wanted to destabilize society establish an Islamic state through violence.

The trial is a test of a new Dutch law, which introduced the charge of "membership of a criminal organization with terrorist intent" carrying a maximum sentence of 15 years. The group of Muslim men are of largely Moroccan immigrant descent.

Monday's proceedings, in a packed high-security court nicknamed the "bunker", started with an attempt to question Malika Chabi, the 17-year-old former wife of one of the accused, Nouriddin El Fatmi, also known as Fouad.
Dressed in a long, rose-colored robe with a black headscarf, Chabi refused to speak in court, but the statement she had given to police earlier was read out by the presiding judge.

"A throat must be cut from the front, but not entirely so there is maximum suffering. Fouad said this while a film was shown on which people were beheaded," her statement said.

"He showed knives and films about slaughtering and showed us how to take a knife out of its scabbard and said he and Bouyeri stole sheep from a farm to practice slaughtering."

The judge said Chabi told police that El Fatmi had said they should drive a car carrying explosives into a shopping center to die as martyrs and then quoted verses from the Koran.

"You also watched a film featuring Osama bin Laden in which there were songs about jihad and that sort of thing, you were given cassettes by El Morabit with sermons in which death was wished upon the United States," the judge said.
Mohamed El Morabit is one of the accused.
Reuters

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Russell Wilcox is a retired college professor who spends several months in Florida and several months in Rhode Island each year, and whose interests include boating and sailing, political activism, ballroom dancing and bridge. He has an MBA from Harvard, a Computer Systems CAGS from Bryant and a BS from Northeastern. He has worked in industry for EG&G and Texas Instruments, operated his own business with more than 200 employees, and served as Director of the Computer Information Systems Program for Stonehill College. He is a published author of two technical studies, and is the proud father of four children and the proud grandfather of six grandchildren. A holder of two patents in microchip connections and a true product of the melting pot, his father is the son of a Yankee farmer, and his mother the second generation daughter of Italian immigrants who retained their culture, but strove mightily to become Americans, sending four sons to fight against Hitler and Mussolini.