 Police have detained an eighth suspect in the slaying of a Dutch filmmaker, allegedly by a group accused of threatening to kill several Dutch politicians in the name of Islam, prosecutors said yesterday. The 23-year-old suspect, who was not named in a statement issued by Amsterdam prosecutors, was detained on Friday. It was not clear if he was a Dutch citizen, but the statement specified that he was "of Moroccan origin." The suspects' ethnicity has become an issue because the government announced plans to revoke the Dutch citizenship of dual citizens suspected of terrorism.
| (Grumble.) If they stretched their necks, their citizenship would cease to be an issue, wouldn't it? |
Police said the main suspect, a 26-year old man with dual Dutch and Moroccan nationality who was arrested shortly after the murder, had links to Islamic extremists. The murder of Van Gogh has brought the threat of Islamic terrorism and a jihad close to home in the Netherlands. "A brutal reality presents itself: jihad warriors are among us," the centre-left Volkskrant daily writes on the front-page yesterday.
A combative Deputy Prime Minister Gerrit Zalm vowed on Friday to hit back at Muslim extremism. "We are declaring war back: we will step up the fight and will make radical Islamic movements disappear from the Netherlands," he said.
| Killing all their adherents is the best way to get rid of them. Trust me on that... |
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