Amsterdam
A Dutch man confessed in court this week that he shot and stabbed filmmaker Theo van Gogh before slashing his throat. “I did what I did purely out of my beliefs,” said Mohammed Bouyeri, a devout Muslim who was born and raised in Amsterdam, the son of Moroccan immigrants. Speaking directly to the victim’s mother as she sat in the courtroom, Bouyeri said he had no sympathy for her and would commit the murder again, “praise Allah.” Van Gogh, a great-grandnephew of the famous painter, had angered Muslims in the Netherlands with his film about violence against women in Islamic societies. His murder last November prompted a wave of criticism of the lack of assimilation among the Netherlands’ large Muslim minority.
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