 The largescale anti-terror operation in The Hague, Amsterdam and Amersfoort on Wednesday thwarted a planned attack in the Netherlands at the last moment, Interior Minister Johan Remkes told MPs on Thursday night. The seven arrested suspects are allegedly linked to Mohammed B., the 26-year-old Dutch-Moroccan man accused of killing Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam last week, newspaper De Telegraaf reported. The suspected Islamic extremists are belong to the so-called "Hofstadgroep", a network centered around the 18-year-old Samir A., who was arrested in July and is accused of planning attacks against targets such as Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, the Dutch Parliament in The Hague and the Borssele nuclear power plant. The 19-year-old Jason W. — one of the two suspects arrested as Special Forces officers fired tear gas into a house in the Laak district of The Hague after a 14-hour stand-off on Wednesday — was allegedly prepared to die in a suicide attack. | If he was so willing to die, how come he gave up? |
A farewell letter written to his mother indicates that he was prepared to die as a martyr for Jihad. The teenager — who is the son of a US man and a Dutch woman — is believed to have converted to radical Islam five years ago. | Another convert, another would-be martyr. That seems to be a trend. |
The Spanish Interior Ministry said Thursday the name of one of the two men arrested in The Hague, Dutch-Moroccan Ismail A., appears on a document found on Casablanca bombing suspect Abdeladim Akoudad when he was arrested in Barcelona in October 2003. Akoudad was also allegedly in contact with Mohammed B., who is also suspected to have had "direct contact" with a leading figure who was active in a Spanish terror cell. That man, Mohammed Achraf, was recently arrested in Zurich, Switzerland. Spanish investigator Baltasar Garzón denied this week there is evidence that a group of alleged violent extremists recently arrested in Spain are connected to Mohammed B., the alleged killer of Van Gogh. But a Spanish Interior Ministry source has reportedly said that Garzon knows better and his statement was only designed to protect existing investigations. |