Mohammed Bouyeri
| Mohammed Bouyeri | |
|---|---|
Bouyeri in 2004
|
|
| Born |
8 March 1978 Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Criminal charge | Murder, terrorism |
| Criminal penalty | Life without parole |
| Criminal status | In prison |
Mohammed Bouyeri (born 8 March 1978) is a Moroccan-Dutch Islamic terrorist and convicted murderer who is serving a life sentence without parole for the assassination of Dutch film director Theo van Gogh. He holds both Dutch and Moroccan citizenship and was a member of the Hofstad Network.
Mohammed Bouyeri was a second-generation Berber-Moroccan-Dutchman. In 1995, Mohammed Bouyeri finished his secondary education. He changed his major several times and left after five years without obtaining a degree. A second-generation migrant from Morocco, Bouyeri used the pen name "Abu Zubair" for writing and translating. He often posted letters online and sent e-mails under this name.
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 Amsterdam's Slotervaart suburb. After his mother died and his father remarried in the fall of 2003, he started to live according to strict interpretations of Sunni 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 Sunnis, 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.
Filmmaker Theo van Gogh was notorious for his insults to "everyone respected in postwar multicultural Dutch society, including Jews and Muslims" but who "also helped bring Muslim actors onto Dutch television." In 2004, he and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali refugee who was a Dutch member of parliament at the time, directed a short film called Submission, Part I about Islam and violence against women. In the film women are shown wearing transparent clothes with verses of the Quran written on their bodies. The film aired in August 2004 on Dutch television in prime time, the ensuing outcry led the Dutch police to offer police protection for both directors, but van Gogh refused.
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