From civic activist to alleged murderer

MSNBC – From civic activist to alleged murderer

AMSTERDAM – “Hello, dear readers,” wrote the cheerful new contributor in the March 2002 issue of a local newsletter. He introduced himself as a volunteer staff member of a community center in a western suburb of Amsterdam dominated by working-class Moroccan immigrants.

Two and a half years later, Dutch police say, the same man gunned down Theo van Gogh on a street in Amsterdam, stood over the Dutch filmmaker’s body and calmly slit his throat with a black-handled butcher knife. The killer then impaled a five-page letter to the victim’s chest that pledged that Islam would “drive evil back to its dark hole using the sword.”