 THE HAGUE - The trial of a young Muslim, alleged to have plotted attacks against several targets in The Netherlands including the country's main airport and a nuclear power station, is scheduled to open on Thursday in Rotterdam. The prosecution suspect defendant Samir Azzouz, 18, of having links with a radical network known as the Lions of Islamic Jihad Hofstad Group, another associate of which is on trial for the murder last November of moviemaker Theo van Gogh, who directed a controversial film criticizing Islamic attitudes towards women. Azzouz stands accused of planning attacks against the Dutch parliament, Schiphol airport, the defense ministry, the Borssele nuclear power plant and offices used by the Dutch intelligence service.
| All at once or one at a time? |
Investigators said plans of the alleged targets were found in the home of the accused, along with ammonia and other materials that could have been used to make a bomb. Azzouz was also accused of an armed robbery in a Rotterdam supermarket to finance his alleged terrorist operations. He was arrested in the course of investigations into this robbery.
Twelve members of the Hofstad group -- the name given to a number of young radical Moslems in Rotterdam and Amsterdam by Dutch intelligence -- were arrested in November and accused of belonging to a terrorist conspiracy. Investigators said that Azzouz, who has joint Moroccan-Dutch citizenship and is a father, attempted to go to Chechnya in 2003 to fight Russian forces and had since been followed by Dutch intelligence.
He was arrested for a first time in October 2003 along with four other suspected Islamic terrorists extremists, but all were released for lack of proof. Judicial sources said Azzouz had declined to answer questions during the preliminary stages of the investigation, or to undergo a personality test.
| Wise move, he'd have flunked. |
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