Two Dutch persons in terrorism cases
In March 2009 Dutch police arrested Aqaal Abbasi in the southern Dutch town of Breda. He is a Pakistani national and arrested on suspicion of belonging to an “international jihadist network” operating from Barcelona preparing attacks in western Europe. There was no evidence he planned an attack in the Netherlands and the inquiry was the largest terrorism research so far in the Netherlands and the first time the Netherlands was confronted with an international terror cell according to Dutch authorities in NRC Handelsblad. Abbasi was a free man after a while because there was not enough evidence against. However he was re-arrested in August and extradited to Spain where a trial against him will start in December. He is one of the eleven people charged with offences relating to planning suicide bombings in Germany and Barcelona. It is claimed that Abbasi travelled from Spain to Germany to carry out a suicide attack, but left for the Netherlands without actually doing it.
Another Muslim from the Netherlands involved in a terrorism case is Houria Chentouf. She was arrested at Liverpool John Lennon Airport 16 October 2008 during an interview with Special Branch officers. Apparently after a USB device fell out of her burqa she was arrested and the search of the device uncovered a huge library of material including a manual describing how to make car bombs and how to detonate them. Another document fund was an explosives manual for the brothers of the Mujahidin Chentouf lived in the Netherlands but left the country, as she stated, because of the discrimination against Muslims. During the court case it became quite clear that Houria Chentouf had mental health problems and had self-harmed in the past after the death of a relative. In a letter she wrote:
Forgive me. Shall I give in to the rule of tyrants? Do you think that is something I would do? No, I would not, because I fear Allah. Myself and my children would seek revenge and we would be bombs for the sake of this religion.
According to the prosecutor this that she was prepared to sacrifice her life and those of her children for her religion.
It is not clear whether or not she is related to Mohammed Chentouf who serves prison time for being part of a terror plot (together with Samir Azzouz) but she did have contact with him by sending letters. She also had the phone numbers of exiled Muslim preacher Omar Bakri from the Al Muhajiroun and Abu Izzadeen (Trevor Brooks) a British convert jailed for raising money for terrorists and inciting terrorism overseas. She had also posted on the Internet about the role of women in jihad and wrote in support of Muslims seeking martyrdom.
She pleaded guilty to the possession of the documents connected with the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism and was sentenced to two years in prison for the possession of documents likely to be useful for a terrorist. According to the judge the fact that she had thousands of documents showing her interest in Jihad, it meant that the possession of such documents is not a coincidence. The judge told she had ‘developed an obsessive interest in Jihad and the more extreme forms of Islam’, but there was ‘no evidence’ to suggest she intended to pass the material on and no intention of putting it into practical use.
If Houria Chentouf indeed suffers from mental illness such a line of reasoning can be questioned. Is she indeed a potential terrorist or a woman coping with some severe issues? On the other hand others have said this is only used to discredit her and her cause. I also do wonder if a non-Muslim has the same amount of documents and even the same documents, would he be convicted as well? The documents don’t have to be useful, likely to be useful is enough. In the Netherlands she would not have been convicted because the possesion of such documents does not constitute a violation of the law (although it can be used as arguments in court cases as happened in the past). It has not become clear why she was questioned at the airport by officers of Special Branch in the first place. Moreover she was already stopped four months earlier under the Terrorism Act at Liverpool Airport before she was eventually arrested in October.
Because she had spent more than a year in remand, she was freed but being kept in custody while arrangements are made for her deportation to Holland.
