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Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > Crime and Terrorism: The Role of Moroccan Immigrants In Holland, Belgium and Spain

Crime and Terrorism: The Role of Moroccan Immigrants In Holland, Belgium and Spain

September 25, 2008

Crime and Terrorism: The Role of Moroccan Immigrants In Holland, Belgium and Spain

By EMERSON VERMAAT

September 25, 2008 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Busdrivers in the Dutch city of Gouda feel frustrated. They are afraid of Moroccan youths who have caused serious problems for years now. On September 14, local busdrivers decided not to drive busses through the problematic "Oosterwei" city district anylonger after one of them had been robbed by a Moroccan youth who threatened to kill him with a knife. Other busdrivers had been spat at. Many bus drivers are scared to death.

There have been incidents where young Moroccans refused to pay for the bus ticket. On other occasions busses cannot pass through because the road is being blocked by Moroccans. And during the month of Ramadan Moroccans use to park their cars in front of a local butcher around 6 p.m. to do their shopping. Busses cannot pass through either. Parking prohibitions are not enforced by the police, because they do not want to upset the restive Moroccan community. Moroccans complained that the decision of the bus drivers "discriminated" against them.¹

Quite a number of Moroccan youngsters display an extremely arrogant attitude. They tell local native Dutch living in Gouda-Oosterwei "to get the hell out of there." "You don't belong here!" Or: "I'll kill you, you fucking racist!" "They act as they own the country," a local Dutch inhabitant told the Dutch newspaper "De Telegraaf." We don't feel at home here anylonger."² Many local inhabitants are terrified. Other complain that garbage is being dumped in the streets. There is a feeling that not all Moroccans care about clean streets or the environment.

Police often fail to intervene quickly, as was clear when a camera team was attacked after a 19-old Moroccan had been arrested. A journalist and photographer from the daily newspaper "De Telegraaf" was also attacked by an angry Moroccan mob. Native Dutch feel that the young criminals have free rein. A retired couple in the Oosterwei district says they are now living in a no-go area. Especially at night, they say, it is dangerous. "These criminals have created their own ghetto," 67-year old Willem says.³Some native Dutch are so terrified that they want to emigrate.

There are now forty officially designated "urban problem districts" ("probleemwijken") in the Netherlands. The real number of urban problem districts is much higher, though. The high crime rate in these urban districts is largely due to young Moroccans and Antillians from the Netherlands Antilles who sometimes operate in criminal gangs.

Today, Moroccan youths are even causing serious problems in smaller towns like Ede, a town with up to 40 percent Christian people. Young Moroccans were dancing in the streets when Al-Qaeda attacked America on 9/11. The most notorious urban problem district of Ede is "Veldhuizen." Here, 78-year Mrs. Hartman, a native and slightly handicapped lady, was attacked by Moroccan youths who kicked her and forcefully took her handbag away. She fell to the ground and broke her arm. It happened on September 15, 2008. The old lady is still shocked. ⁴ She will now leave Ede, a place where she has spent most of her life. The city authorities' belated response was an announcement that the city would soon install cameras in Velduizen. But the authorities do not dare to take tougher measures against these criminal youths – they are afraid of being labelled as "racists." "Riotous assembly" ("samenscholing") is officially prohibited but this regulation is hardly enforced. Like elswehere, Morroccan youths have caused problems for years in Ede. They set cars on fire, mugged people, harassed native Dutch. They frequently enjoy challenging the police.

Dutch Interior Minister Guusje ter Horst (from the Labor Party) was severely criticized after she proposed to register the ethnic origin of crime perpetrators. This still a taboo subject in the Netherlands, especially in the minister's own Labour Party. Ter Horst, however, does not care about such sensibilities. She told a newspaper reporter that when she was doing dental research back in the 1970s she discovered that Turkish and Moroccan children had much more dental problems than other children. She wanted to introduce some kind of inquiry form. But then she was told this was "discrimination," because she was singling out a certain group. Ter Horst: "This is outrageous, don't you think?"⁵

Native Dutch citizens forced to leave their homes by angry Moroccans youths

There are several cases of native Dutch who were forced to leave their homes in Amsterdam and move to another part of the city after groups of Moroccan youths had frequently intimidated them. The weak city authorities hardly intervened. They should have taken tougher measures because these native Dutch people were and still are the real victims of discrimination. It was in 2003 that Ger Laan and his Dutch girlfriend decided to move to the Amsterdam district "De Baarsjes," a part of Amsterdam West where Moroccan immigrants are in the majority. One of their neighbors was a divorced Morrocan mother having five children (four boys and one girl). One of those boys served a prison sentence in 2003 but was free again in June 2004. Two of the Moroccan boys were extremely noisy. Ger Laan decided to complain about it. Another Dutch lady named Mary who was living nearby was intimidated by these Moroccan youths: "We'll cut your throat," they told her in February 2005. Mary's five year old son was so upset that he started crying. "They don't mean it," Mary tried to reassure the young boy. "We do mean it, you fucking bitch," the Moroccan youths said. Four months later, Ger Laan's girlfriend was also intimidated. A group of Moroccan neighborhood youths tried to steal her bicycle. They showed her pornographic pictures and said: "This is what we are going to do to you. We know where you are living." Fourteen year old Murat was among them. He was one of the four sons of that divorced Moroccan mother.

Two years later, Ger's car was stolen. The young criminals who did it needed his car, a Peugeot 106, for a burglary and subsequently dumped it in one of Amsterdam's canals. Ger Laan reported the car theft to the police saying he suspected his neighboring Moroccan boys were responsible. It took him a great deal of trouble to convince the police that it was important to write down in the official police report that Moroccan youths were probably responsible. Later that day, another neighbor told Ger Laan that he had seen himself how 15-year old Zakariya, one of Murat's brothers, had driven away in Ger Laan's Peugeot. This was also reported to the police, but it took three months before Zakariya was arrested. He was free again in November 2007. In January 2008, a window of Ger Laan's new car was smashed. Once again, Ger Laan believed Zakariya had done it. In February 2008, a group of six Moroccan youths, Zakariya among them, intimidated him right in front of his house. The police now told him they could no longer guarantee his security. In March 2008, Ger and his girlfriend moved to a safer area in the city. They deliberately informed nobody about their new address.⁶Terrified "refugees" in their own country, terrorized by Moroccan hoodlums.

Mrs. Bronbeek, an elderly native Dutch woman, has lived in Amsterdam West ("Geuzenveld") since 1956. She complained about Moroccan youths who misbehave during the Ramadan festivities. She claimed these youths take the sausages away from Dutch fellow schoolchildren, because Moroccans are not allowed to eat in daytime during Ramadan. Therefore, they want Dutch children to be hungry, too. Mrs. Bronbeek knew a 12-year old Dutch pupil who was called "a Christian dog" because she was wearing a cross necklace.⁷

Robbing old ladies and attacking ambulance staff

The Amsterdam-Geuzeveld district is notorious. There were several cases of Morrocan youngsters who intimidated or even robbed defenseless old ladies. They managed to enter a local nursing home for the elderly and mentally deficient, intimidating those who lived inside as well as some of the nurses. They robbed a number of these eldery people and also tried to set the place on fire. Stolen goods from the nursery home were later sold to others – a clear indication that this youth gang had evolved into an organized crime network. Female nursing staff had been intimidated as well and they were quite terrified. As one of the nurses left the nursing home at 11:15 p.m. a man approached her and made a throat cutting gesture saying: "I'll kill you!" It happened three times in just one week.⁸ (The throat cutting gesture is very common among aggressive North African immigrant youths in major European cities.)

These are not the only problems caused by Moroccan youths in Amsterdam-Geuzenveld. On Wednesday September 3, 2008, someone had stuck a knife in the body of a 15-year old Moroccan boy. After the ambulance arrived and a paramedic tried to help the heavily bleeding victim, the victim's brother and some other Moroccan youths suddenly threatened the paramedic, saying: "You are touching our little brother. If he dies, we'll beat you to death, too." The ambulance team quickly took the wounded Moroccan boy into the ambulance car and left. "They threatened to kill us," one of ambulance team members later said. "They are lashing out at us, calling us fucking bastards. They are capable of killing us. We are scared. They may have had a knife." Another team member later said that someone had bitten him. "And they are our Moroccan fellow citizens," he added sarcastically. "It's time to stop pampering them." "We were trying to safe someone's life, and then they threaten to kill us," another ambulance team member said. One of the witnesses said it was "a Surinamese man" who stuck the knife in the body of the 15-year old Moroccan boy. "He did so three times."

Ambulance teams in Amsterdam were utterly dismayed. They decided to organize a demonstration right in the city hall where they complained to mayor Job Cohen. They said they wanted to go on strike but Cohen advised them not to. Cohen, normally a self composed and friendly man, was furious. He knew it was not the first time that angry Moroccan youths attacked ambulance crews as they were attending those who urgently needed medical help. After having talked to the demonstrating ambulance crews, Cohen said: "It is a fact that most acts of aggression against ambulance staff are primarily committed by Moroccans." "This is outrageous," the mayor continued. "It goes beyond all bounds." With these Moroccan youths in mind, he added: "Don't you ever dare to touch those who provide assistance."⁹

Ahmed Aboutaleb: "Send those (Moroccan) offenders who commit serious crimes to Morocco"

This is just the tip of the iceberg. What is worse, the undermanned Amsterdam police force and the indecisive city authorities are incapable of really tackling these huge problems. They refuse to take tough measures because they fear such a policy might "upset" the ethnic Moroccan community and disrupt "multicultural harmony." There was a feeling after the "ambulance incident" that mayor Cohen was just talking tough without acting tough. Many native Dutch now say that those second or first generation immigrants who are directly responsible for the process of social disintegration must be cut out. This is precisely what well integrated Dutch Moroccans like Ahmed Aboutaleb and Ahmed Marcouch are recommending as well.

All Dutch Moroccans also have Moroccan nationality. Morocco regards Moroccans living elsewhere still as Moroccan nationals, even after they have adopted the nationality of their new country. Most of these Morrocans have two passports and two nationalities. Aboutaleb, who is currently Deputy Minister of Social Affairs in the Dutch government, says that those Moroccans who commit serious crimes against the rule of law must be deprived of their Dutch nationality and sent back to Morocco. His view is not very popular in the Dutch Labor Party of which he is a member.¹⁰ Some of his fellow Dutch Moroccans call Aboutaleb a traitor. He is anything but a traitor. Ahmed Aboutaleb is an excellent example of those Moroccan immigrants who work hard and serve their new country quite well. Aboutaleb's philosophy is simple: Those youngsters who do not want to work (and many of them are Moroccans), are not entitled to welfare money.

Another example is Ahmed Marcouch, a close ally of Aboutaleb in the Dutch Labor Party. Marcouch said in an interview that Moroccan frequent offenders ("onverbeterlijke Marokkaanse lastpakken") should be sent to Morocco for a certain period of time to be taught discipline there.¹¹ Marcouch does not hesitate to rebuke Dutch Moroccan fathers, saying: "Why are you staying here when you don't like the Netherlands and infect your children with all those anti-Dutch sentiments?"¹²

Another Dutch Moroccan, Farid Azarkan, says: "The time of pampering is really over now." ¹³ Finally, Dutch Moroccan Labor Party MP Samir Bouchibti says that Dutch Moroccans should now stop to just blaming others. "It is necessary to complain about discrimination, but let this not be an excuse for escaping responsiblity for your own actions." ¹⁴ Those voices must not be ignored. These well integrated Dutch Moroccans know their own culture. They know that a soft approach - "pampering" does not really help, on the contrary such an approach will make the problem much worse.

Behaving as if they are above the law

About 42 percent of the Dutch Moroccans are unemployed. Many second generation Moroccans (62 percent!) in Amsterdam do not finish school. A high percentage of them are involved in crime. ¹⁵ The costs of integrating these people into society are enormous. The Dutch government plans to spend some two billion euros to deal with the so-called "urban problem districts." But it will take ten years before any results can be shown. ¹⁶ In Amsterdam alone millions of euros were reportedly wasted on all kinds of Moroccan "youth-projects" which never produced any results.¹⁷ This so-called "pampering" of criminal youths had an adverse effect on their behavior. They increasingly begin to behave as "little princes" feeling they are above the law and do not need to care about the authorities any longer.¹⁷

An increasing number of these young Moroccans now evolve into seasoned criminals. The Amsterdam police are worried about those who started as petty criminals some five years ago, but are now operating on a nationwide scale and have joined the real underworld. "They are used to huge amounts of money and violence," says Willem Woelders, former chief of the Amsterdam criminal police. Woelders describes these Mococcan criminals as successors to Willem Holleeder, a leading figure in the Dutch underworld. He fears they could become the new leaders of the underworld. ²⁰

Former Amsterdam police chief Joop van Riessen writes about a criminal network of young Moroccans in Amsterdam who were involved in 50 robberies and 24 other major crimes. They were operating on a nationwide scale for at least ten years until April 2006 when eight members of the gang were arrested. All of them were not older than 30, some of them were still in their early twenties.²¹ In his memoirs Van Riessen complaints about local politicians and judges who naively underestimate what is known as the "multicultural underworld." There was a tendency to see so-called "ethnic criminals" as victims of discrimination ("slachtofferdenken") who needed help. They should not be punished, on the contrary, society must have pity for such victims ("zieligheidscultuur").²² The first to launch the term "multicultural underworld" was Dutch criminologist Frank Bovenkerk who also published a major study on the Turkish mafia. Bovenkerk, an authority on crime and migration, claims that the "multicultural societal project" is successful at least in one area, namely the underworld.²³

In April 2008, Amsterdam police rounded up a network of young Moroccan criminals who were involved in drug trafficking, car theft, armed robberies and pick pocketing. Members of the gang did not even hesitate to intimidate individual police officials.

Intimidating police officials is not an isolated case. Other Moroccan youths also intimidated Amsterdam policemen by damaging their private cars, harassing them when they were shopping or calling them at home.

Most hard-core Moroccan criminals are involved in drugs, prostitution and armed robberies. In the city of Maastricht, the capital of the southern province of Limburg, Moroccan "drug runners" harrass foreign tourists by aggressively trying to sell drugs to them. Between October 2007 and May 2008 police confiscated 67 vehicles and lots of cocaine and cash money. Most of the "drug runners" live in Rotterdam, Utrecht and Gouda. In these cities Moroccan mafia families run the criminal drug market of Maastricht. They hire those young criminals known as "drug runners." They operate in Maastricht and Limburg because this is a border region visited annually by some 4 million "drug tourists," 4000 per day, that is. The local overburdened police force is incapable of really tackling this huge organized crime problem. Those drug runners who are arrested are quickly replaced by others. And all to often these people posssess arms. They ussually ignore the police's prohibition order to enter certain city districts and display an arrogant attitude. They are not at all afraid of the authorities and in court they invariably deny they were involved in any crime.²⁴

The same applies to those young Moroccans who are involved in prostitution. You can easily recognize them near the Red Light districts of Dutch and Belgian big cities where they often drive expensive cars. Many of these pimps are known as "loverboys." A "loverboy" seduces a young (sometimes minor) native Dutch woman by giving her presents and pretending to be her friend. Once his victim has fallen in love with him and is dependent on him, he will begin to make a special request to his "girlfriend": Would she now be willing to make some money for him? Sooner or later the "loverboy" forces his female victim into prostitution. He usually does not hesitate to intimidate, beat and threaten her if she refuses to comply with his wishes.

Some 40 percent of the "loverboys" are Moroccans. Nearly half of the "loverboys" are Caribbeans from the Netherlands Antilles or the Dominican Republic. Most of these criminals operate in big cities like Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Utrecht and Groningen. A native Dutch family in Rotterdam wanted to move to another city after highly aggressive "loverboys" had succesfully targeted their teen-age daughter Patricia. For some reason, police often fail to arrest these "loverboys." Meanwhile, their victims sometimes have to flee to other cities or city districts because they are terrified of these criminals.

In July 2007, a Moroccan loverboy named Abdessamad was sentenced to 12 years in prison. He frequently tortured and raped his victim, a Dutch teen-age girl. One of the cruel things he did to this defenseless girl was causing small knife injuries and then pouring vinegar and chlorine into the wound. When she became pregnant he subjected her to forced abortion. She was not his only victim. Abdessamad was not in Holland during the trial, so he was sentenced in absentia.²⁵ He is probably in Morocco now.

Involvement of young Dutch Moroccans in radical movements or terrorism

The radicalization of young Dutch Moroccans, especially their interest in so-called "Salafism" (ultra-orthodox Islam), is a matter of growing concern. At least 15 perent of the Moroccan mosques are visited by Salafist preachers and each time hundreds of susceptible young Moroccans are listening to these hate clerics.²⁶ Dutch anthropologist Martijn de Koning wrote a highly interesting study on the "search for ‘pure' Islam" by young Dutch Moroccans. In the city of Gouda, for example, many young Moroccans now identify themselves with this kind of Islam. Some of them reject "Western democracy" and believe in violent jihad (holy war).²⁷

Amsterdam, with its Moroccan immigrant community of 65,000, is considered a hotbed of Muslim extremism. ²⁸ It was in Amsterdam that the so-called "Hofstad Group" originated. It was in Amsterdam, too, that a Dutch Moroccan named Mohammed Bouyeri, founder and leader of the Hofstad Group, killed Dutch columnist and film maker Theo van Gogh on November 2, 2004. The Hofstad Group largely consisted of radicalized young Moroccans some of whom were illegal immigrants. The members of the group frequently met in Bouyeri's small house in Amsterdam West.

After the killling of Theo van Gogh there were major terrorist trials against Bouyeri, the Hofstad Group and another group called "Piranha." I was present at all these trials. Bouyeri got a life sentence in July 2005. Nine members of the Hofstad Group were convicted in March 2006. Defense lawyers argued that the group was not a terrorist organization but simply "an innocent group of friends" who enjoyed having cozy chats with each other in Bouyeri's house. But five members of the group possessed arms, and one does have arms just for the sake of innocent friendships or cozy chats.²⁹

Belgium

What has been said about the problems caused by a relative high number of Moroccan immigrants in Holland also applies to Moroccan immigrants in Belgium who are over represented in the crime statistics. Here, too, many young Moroccans turn to radical Salafist Islam. Moroccan and other North African youths in Brussels and Antwerp harass and intimidate native Belgian women and female tourists. Some of them are also involved in drug trafficking, prostitution and violent muggings. Native Belgians are now a minority in some urban problem districts of Brussels and Antwerp and often they are scared.³⁰ In order to prevent major violent riots police are often afraid to arrest these youths who have actually taken control of whole neighborhoods. In Belgium, too, North African youth gangs evolve into seasoned criminal networks causing a great deal of damage to society. There is, for example, a trigger happy Belgian Moroccan named Nordin Ben Allal, an extremely dangerous and armed criminal who escaped from prison four times. The last time was in October 2007 when four other armed criminals hijacked a helicopter and landed on the prison's interior square. In court Ben Allal always denied he was involved in violence, even when there was conclusive proof that he had gunned down two policemen in 2004. Ben Allal was involved in at least sixty burglaries and armed muggings.³¹

Muslim radicals and Salafists are on the march, too. There are now parallel societies where sharia law is being enforced and polygamy accepted as a normal pattern of behavior. During Ramadan, imams call on the believers to donate money for the jihad, the armed struggle against the unbelievers. It looks as if the Afghan Taliban and their totalitarian fascistic ideology have taken over certain neigborhoods. Women are forced to wear Saudi Niqabs or even Afghan Burka's. Radical Salafist Muslims want to establish their Islamic Kingdom in Belgium here and now.³²

Moroccan youngsters have been recruited for the jihad in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2005/2006, 13 members of the Al-Qaeda linked "Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group" (GICM) were on trial in Belgium. Prosecutor Bernard Michel said this terrorist cell supplied other jihadists with forged identity papers and money, thus enabling them to travel to Iraq or Afghanistan. Other Moroccan immigrants in Belgium were involved in the preparation of terrorist attacks in Europe. One of them was Abdelmajid Bouchar, a prominent GICM member who was involved in the commuter train bombings in Madrid on March 11, 2004. Moustapha Lounani, a GICM member in Schaarbeek (Brussels), Belgium, had been trained by Al-Qaeda and was also connected to the Madrid bombings.³³ Schaarbeek is a hotbed of extremism and crime. In Lounani's home police found a "testament" saying he left 5000 euros to those who fight. Lounani was also in touch with Hassan Al-Haski and Youssef Belhadj who were equally linked to the Madrid bombings.³⁴

The first female suicide bomber in Iraq was a Belgian Muslim convert named Muriel Dugauque ("Oum Abderrahman"). She and her Moroccan husband Issam Goris traveled to Fallujah, Iraq, in 2005 where they were contacted by members of the Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi network ("Al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers").³⁵The man who coordinated the suicide trip to Iraq was a Tunesian immigrant named Bilal Soughir. A Belgian court sentenced Soughir to ten years in prison in January 2008. The court said: "Soughir created one of the most dangerous terror groups known in Belgium. Using all means at their disposal it was their intention to wage civil war in Iraq. With indiscriminate force they sought to help a Sunni minority to attain power. They meddled into a conflict which was not their own. They want to go to paradise. In their view, this is only possible if they die as martyrs."³⁶ Defense lawyers lamely claimed that those on trial were "liberation fighters" who fought the "American occupation" of Iraq.³⁷

Spain

Moroccan criminal networks in Spain primarily focus on illegal immigration, drugs and passport forgery. Northern Morocco is still a major producer of cannabis. Whole village populations are involved in cultivating cannabis. In 2003, the United Nations estimated that the total amount of money involved in Morocco in the year 2002 was about 37.3 billion dollars.³⁸ There has been a steady increase in production since. The government is unwilling to really stop the cultivation of cannabis because they also profit from this officially illegal activity. Spain is a major transit route for illegal transfer of Morrocan cannabis to other European countries.

Moroccan mafias heavily depend on a support network provided by Moroccan immigrants in Spain. More than one third of those arrested in connection to the illegal cannabis/hashish trade in Spain are Moroccans.³⁹ In April 2008, Spanish police confiscated 16,000 kilos of hashish. The number of arrests made was 63, one-third of them being Moroccans. ⁴⁰ In 2007, some 390,000 kilos of hashish were confiscated. Police suspect that the drug mafia organizations developed a new strategy: they now send huge numbers of illegal immigrants in small boats so that the police and the coast guard are too busy with handling these immigrants and can no longer focus on the illegal transfer of drugs to the Spanish mainland. Anti-narcotic police officials now even have to admit they are fighting a lost war.⁴⁰ In Italy police are facing the same kind of problems.

In Spain 31.4 percent of the imprisoned Islamists proceed from Algeria and 39.7 percent are of Moroccan descend.⁴¹ These are staggering figures. Spanish police and security services are worried about the growing influence of radical movements like "Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb" and other so-called "jihadist Salafists" who seek to "liberate" the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in North Morocco as well as Southern Spain ("Al-Andalus") or even the whole Spanish peninsula.

The bulk of those who were involved in the terrorist attacks on commuter trains in Spain on March 11, 2004, were Arab and Moroccan immigrants. A keyrole was played by Jamal Zougam who was one of the terrorists who laid the bombs in the commuter trains bound for Madrid during the morning rush hour of March 11. He also provided the cell phones used to detonate these devastating bombs (nearly 200 people were killed). Zougam was born in Tangiers, Northern Morocco, in 1973. He was twelve years old when his mother left Morocco for Spain. He grew up in Spain and adopted a Western lifestyle. It was around around the turn of the Millennium, however, that he began to befriend radical Islamists. During visits to his home town of Tangiers, Zougam came under the influence of Mohammed Fizazi, a notorious hate cleric who also preached in the "Al-Quds Mosque" in far away Hamburg, Germany, a mosque which was frequented by Mohammed Atta (the 9/11 operational suicide commander). Fizazi's movement of "Salafist Jihad" would play a key role in the attacks in Casablanca in March 2003. Zougam also befriended Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas ("Abu Dahdah"), a Syrian immigrant who was the leader of Al-Qaeda in Spain. In the Madrid district of Lavapiés, Zougam run a telephone shop which specialized in manipulating stolen cell phones and providing forged identity papers to illegal immigrants.⁴²

A key role in the March 11 attacks was further played by Hassan el Haski ("Abu Hamza"), the leader or "emir" of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM), which was also very active in Belgium. The March 11 attacks were partly carried out by GICM members. El Haski was handling vast amounts of money.⁴³ Morocco requested Spain to temporarily hand over El Haski to try him in Morocco for his possible role in the attacks in Casablanca. In 2004, Spanish National Court judge Baltazar Garzón had El Haski arrested because he, too, believed the latter was involved in those attacks. Various key witnesses then described El Haski as "a top leader."⁴⁴

Concluding comments

Certainly not all Moroccan immigrants in Europe are involved in crime or sympathize with radical Islamist groups. Many Moroccans are loyal citizens of the country they emigrated to. A relatively high proportion of Moroccan immigrants, however, are not very well integrated into Western society. Even after twenty or thirty years, many first generation Moroccan immigrants still do not speak any European language. Some of them are still illiterate. It is relatively often that their children get involved in (petty) crime or begin to embrace radical Salafist Islam. In addition, quite a lot of male Moroccans prefer to marry family members or a woman from their village in Morocco. Marriages between niece and nephew are not uncommon. These Moroccan brides arrive Europe in vast numbers, posing a new burden on society. The new immigrants are not integrated and do not speak the local language. Many of these marriages end in divorce. The most problematic group are North Moroccan Berbers. Northern Morocco is also an area where most of the cannabis is being produced.

This kind of continuous immigration must be stopped. Moreover, those Moroccan immigrants who seriously and frequently misbehave must be sent back to Morocco. This is not a viewpoint embraced by just a few "xenophobes" or "racists." Well integrated Moroccans in Holland now say the same thing – and they know their own culture better than anyone else.

Emerson Vermaat is an investigative journalist specialized in crime and terrorism. His website is: www.emersonvermaat.com

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