Dutch Raids Net 7 Suspected of Assassination Plots

Dutch police arrested a known teenage extremist Friday and six others suspected of plotting to assassinate Dutch politicians and attack the headquarters of the government intelligence service, authorities said.

The group, they said, has links to a cell that was broken up after the Nov. 2 slaying of Theo van Gogh, an outspoken filmmaker and descendant of the artist Vincent van Gogh.

As anti-terrorism agents carried out raids in Amsterdam, an outlying suburb and The Hague, well-armed police guarded the nation’s intelligence service headquarters, parliament and other government buildings in The Hague. Authorities said the deployment was a response to the imminent threat the suspects posed as they prepared to buy automatic weapons and explosives.

The accused ringleader is Samir Azzouz, 19, a Dutch citizen of Moroccan descent who was acquitted in April of charges that he had plotted to bomb Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, said Vincent van Steen, a spokesman for the AIVD intelligence service.

“He is the main suspect,” Van Steen said in a telephone interview. “These seven people were involved in plotting attacks on Dutch politicians and government buildings. There was a serious threat.... Some were well-known radicals, and some had been arrested already.”

Friday’s arrests capped a tense year in which the Van Gogh case forced the Netherlands to confront the spread of unusually young, violent and rapidly radicalized extremists. The Dutch are struggling to integrate Islamic immigrants into their society and balance tougher law enforcement with their traditions of tolerance and civil liberty.

Members of the cell in the Van Gogh case, known as the Hofstad group, await trial on charges of plotting follow-up assassinations last year of legislators Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders, who remain under guard. A 27-year-old Dutch citizen of Moroccan descent recently received a life sentence for Van Gogh’s murder.

Ali is a Somali-born politician whose persistent campaign against the mistreatment of Muslim women has led to threats forcing her to live in safe houses and go into hiding at times. She co-wrote a short film by Van Gogh denouncing Islamic extremism that was one reason he was targeted.

Although security for Ali and Wilders has been beefed up as the anniversary of the Van Gogh slaying approaches, investigators have not yet determined whether the two lawmakers were targets of the group arrested Friday, said Wim de Bruin, spokesman for the prosecutor’s office. Islamic extremists often make new attempts on targets of failed plots.

“We have information that they talked about a number of politicians,” De Bruin said. “It’s not clear who.... We know that some of the people we arrested today knew people in the Hofstad group.”

After Azzouz’s acquittal and release this year, intelligence agents kept a close watch on him, Van Steen said. Azzouz has been involved in radicalism since his arrest in Ukraine en route to joining Islamic extremists in Chechnya when he was in high school, investigators say. He allegedly embarked on the new plot with the other suspects, described as five men between the ages of 18 and 30 and a 24-year-old woman. They are all Dutch-born, authorities said.

“It was an autonomous local network,” Van Steen said. Authorities did not say whether the group had ties to international militant networks. The dozen accused members of the Hofstad group awaiting trial allegedly had ties to Moroccan-dominated networks involved in bombings in Madrid last year and Casablanca, Morocco, in 2003. Five had allegedly trained with other militants in camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

During a raid Friday in an immigrant neighborhood of The Hague, police used stun grenades as they stormed a residence, Van Steen said. But there were no injuries or shots fired.

The arrest of Azzouz marks at least the third time he has been taken into custody on terrorism-related charges. In the case earlier this year, he was acquitted of all charges except a minor weapons-related offense after investigators found diagrams of the airport and other suspected bombing targets in his home.

Dutch law makes it difficult for courts to consider evidence gathered by the intelligence service, the country’s main anti-terrorism agency. In some instances, that has resulted in the release of suspects who would probably have remained behind bars in other countries.