Mohammed Bouyeri - Terror Activities

Terror Activities

At an early age he was known to the police as a member of a group of Moroccan "problem-youth". For a while he worked as a volunteer at Eigenwijks, a neighbourhood organization in the Slotervaart suburb of Amsterdam. After his mother died and his father re-married in the fall of 2003, he started to live according to strict interpretations of Islamic Sharia law. As a result, he could perform fewer and fewer tasks at Eigenwijks. For example, he refused to serve alcohol and did not want to be present at activities attended by both women and men. Finally, he put an end to his activities at Eigenwijks altogether. He grew a beard and began to wear a djellaba. He frequently visited the El Tawheed mosque where he met other radical Muslims, among whom was the suspected terrorist Samir Azzouz. With the group of radicals, he is said to have formed the Hofstad Network, a Dutch terrorist cell. He claims to have assassinated Van Gogh to fulfill his duty as a Muslim. Serving as witness in another court case involving the Hofstad group in May 2007, Bouyeri, for the time, expressed in more depth his thoughts regarding Islam. Here, he said that armed jihad was the only option of Muslims in the Netherlands and that democracy was always a violation of Islam because laws cannot be produced by humans but only by Allah.