Author: Toby Sterling
Publication: Associated Press
Date:
Prosecutors suffered crucial setbacks
Monday on the opening day of the trial of 12 terror suspects accused of
supporting the Netherlands' enemies in a time of conflict, a charge that
has not been filed since World War II.
The men are accused of recruiting
young Dutch Muslims for suicide missions, including two who died in an
apparent suicide attack in Kasmir, claimed by India and Pakistan.
The court heard that representatives
of the Dutch intelligence service would be unable to testify about information
they provided in the case, because they must protect their sources. The
agency's evidence, if unverified, will now likely be inadmissible.
At a pretrial hearing last month,
prosecutor Jo Valente told the court the evidence against the defendants
included fake passports and taped farewell messages from apparent recruits
for suicide missions. But it was not certain the court would admit the
tapes into evidence.
Presiding judge Stephaan van Klaveren
also said an American terrorism expert from the FBI would not testify because
personal reasons kept him from traveling to Rotterdam.
Because Dutch troops are part of
the U.S.-led war coalition in Afghanistan, the men are charged with "lending
support to enemies of the Netherlands in a time of war or armed conflict."
That charge was last filed in World War II.
The men are accused in the recruitment
of two Dutch men of Moroccan origin who died in an apparent suicide attack
in December 2001 on Indian troops in Kashmir, where Muslim rebels are fighting
to sever the region from Indian control.
In December, a Dutch court acquitted
four other men accused of assisting planned terrorist attacks on American
targets in France, after the intelligence services refused to break their
silence over their sources. The case was widely seen as undermining efforts
in Europe to prosecute suspected terrorists.
Valente called Antoine Basbous,
a French writer on Islamic fundamentalism, to testify about a dossier of
more than 600 documents that were seized from the suspects.
Basbous said the documents were
all products of a radical Islamist ideology similar to that of al-Qaida
leader Osama bin Laden, who hopes to turn Muslim communities within Western
countries into hostile armed camps.
In one document, he said, "Muslims
are commanded to give each other support in everything that makes resistance
to assimilation possible, such as ... by giving them weapons."
Rudolf Peters, a University of Amsterdam
professor of Islamic history, said the documents were not a call to jihad,
in the sense of a holy war against the West. "It says there is a war against
Islam, but it doesn't follow with a call to arms," Peters said.
The trial is expected to last 10
days.
The defendants come from nine countries,
and some have been in jail for more than a year. Dutch law does not require
them to enter a plea, but their lawyers say there's not enough evidence
to merit an arrest, let alone secure a conviction.
