Dutch court jails four for Islamist plot

AMSTERDAM, Dec 1 (Reuters) A Dutch court sentenced four Muslim militants to up to eight years in jail today for planning attacks on prominent anti-Islam politicians and the headquarters of the Dutch intelligence service.

The judge said the four had come ''dangerously close'' to carrying out terrorist attacks. ''Concrete action was to be expected in the short-term,'' he told the court.

Dutch-Moroccan Samir Azzouz, 20, was sentenced to eight years in prison for plotting attacks and possessing firearms ''with terrorist intent''. Three others, including one woman, received prison terms of three to four years.

Prosecutors had demanded sentences of up to 15 years.

Judge E Koning, whose first name was not given by Dutch authorities, highlighted a martyr-style video made by Azzouz in which he said goodbye to his family and said in Arabic: ''We will spill your blood here as you have spilled the blood of Muslim citizens in Iraq.'' Dutch troops served in Iraq until 2005.

The court applied a tough law introduced in 2004 to make it easier to convict those accused of preparing terrorist attacks, even before they have acted, although it acquitted the four defendants of membership of a terrorist organisation.

Azzouz was initially arrested in a police crackdown following the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004 by another Dutch-Moroccan, Mohammed Bouyeri. Azzouz was acquitted of planning attacks in 2005 only to be rearrested months later.

Koning said Azzouz had wanted to strike at the heart of Dutch democracy. Even though some of the group's actions were amateurish, he said, they were in possession of dangerous and professional weapons that could have killed many people.

SOCIAL TENSION The judge cited evidence that suggested the four militants wanted to drive a truck carrying a bomb into an intelligence service building and attack politicians including Geert Wilders and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, vocal critics of radical Islam.

Hirsi Ali made a film with Van Gogh shortly before his murder that featured veiled women with Koranic verses written on their flesh, accusing Islam of condoning violence against women.

The Van Gogh murder and subsequent trials of suspected Islamists have heightened tension in the Netherlands which has 1 million Muslims, 6 per cent of the population.

The outgoing centre-right government last month proposed banning Muslim women from wearing the burqa and other face veils in public on security grounds. One woman wore a burqa at the court while other friends and relatives of the suspects veiled their faces to stop the media photographing them.

The Dutch government has said the country faces a significant threat of terrorist attack and raised its alert level to ''substantial'', the second highest in a four-stage warning system, after the London bombings on July 7, 2005.

The one female defendant, Soumaya Salah, 23, was sentenced to three years' jail. Her husband Nouriddin El Fatmi, 24, who was already convicted for terrorist crimes earlier this year, and a third man, Mohammed Chentouf, got four-year sentences.

Two other suspects were acquitted of involvement in terrorist plots although one of them got a three-month sentence for a falsified application for identity papers.

REUTERS PB RK2125