Van Gogh killer tells magistrate: I acted alone

6 December 2005

AMSTERDAM — The man serving life imprisonment for the murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh told an examining magistrate last month that he acted alone.

Defence lawyer Peter Plasman said this on Tuesday, confirming a report in newspaper ‘De Volkskrant’. B. told the magistrate that he plotted the killing on his own and his co-accused in a terrorist trial knew nothing about his plans.

B., 27, and 13 other Muslims with Moroccan backgrounds are on trial in Amsterdam charged with membership of the Hofstadgroep, which the authorities claim was a terrorist network.

Prosecutors hope to prove the network revolved around B., who confessed to killing Van Gogh for insulting Islam.

Defence lawyers will claim the men meet frequently to discuss Islam, and not to plot terrorist attacks. B.’s statement to the examining magistrate seems to support this contention.

Lawyer Plasman declined to discuss why his client decided to make the statement after saying little about the killing up to now. Plasman would not comment on the suggestion B. was trying to get his co-accused off the hook.

A potentially important prosecution witness refused to answer any questions when the trial of the 14 opened on Monday.

The presiding judge read out a letter which Malika received last month to warn her not to testify. ‘May Allah lead you or else break your back,’ it said in the letter.

Identified only as Malika, 17, the ex-wife of accused man Nouriddin El F. had allegedly told investigators earlier that El F. talked about driving a car packed with explosives into a supermarket.

El F. was allegedly in possession of a machine pistol when he was arrested in Amsterdam in June this year. Malika and El F. were said to have been married by Mohammed B. according to a Muslim rite in the autumn of 2004.

Subject: Dutch news