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The Hague - A Dutch appeal court in The Hague has acquitted seven men accused of belonging to a terrorist organisation known as the "Hofstad" group. The men were arrested in 2004 on suspicion of preparing terrorist attacks in the Netherlands. The arrests took place shortly after the killing of filmmaker Theo van Gogh. The appeal court ruled that the group was a network, but it did not have a common ideology with terrorist intent. The sentence of the main suspect Jason Walters, originally a US citizen, remains the same at 15 years. He threw a grenade at police shortly...

Brussels, 29 Dec. (AKI) - The European Union has placed the Dutch 'Hofstad Group' and its nine members on the bloc's terrorism black list meaning all their financial assets are frozen and the group can no longer gain access to bank accounts or insurance in EU countries, Radio Netherlands reported on Friday. The move follows a request by the Dutch finance minister Gerrit Zalm. The group’s financial assets were frozen in the Netherlands earlier this year when its nine members were jailed on terrorism charges. Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch Moroccan considered to be the Hofstadt group's leader, is serving a...

WHEN Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician, collected his post from the letterbox on Wednesday he got an unpleasant surprise. Among the bills and junk mail was a letter addressing him as “ugly dog”. It told him he would soon be beheaded. It was an unnerving way to start the day. Only 24 hours earlier Theo van Gogh, the film maker who had often attacked radical Muslims, had been riding along on his bicycle when a Muslim fanatic first shot and then butchered him on a busy street with the nonchalance of an abattoir worker.

AMSTERDAM — Shots were fired as police raided a building on the Moerweg in The Hague on Friday. Dutch parliament buildings hermetically sealed by police Witnesses reported seeing masked men with automatic weapons entering a flat complex on Moerweg which has been sealed off by the police. Radio 1 News was told of people hearing gunfire. The police in The Hague have declined to comment at this stage about the reports. A spokesperson would only say police operations are taking place at several locations in the city. She would also not confirm that a raid was carried out at a...