Taken from Alertnews.org

Dutch prosecutors accused the suspected killer of filmmaker Theo van Gogh on Tuesday of leading a "terrorist organisation" made up of young Muslim men. Mohammed Bouyeri, the Dutch-Moroccan charged with shooting and stabbing Van Gogh dead as he cycled to work on Nov. 2, took a leading role as he hosted meetings in his home for 12 Muslim men arrested after the murder, prosecutors said.

"It is very possible that what started as a normal group of friends turned into an extremist group, not afraid to turn to crime, and into a terrorist organisation," prosecutor Koos Plooy told a pre-trial hearing in Rotterdam. All 12 men have been charged with belonging to a criminal group, conspiring to murder with "terrorist intent" and threatening to kill prominent politicians critical of Islam. Two are charged with the attempted murder of police officers at whom they threw a grenade as the officers tried to arrest them in a dramatic raid in The Hague a week after Van Gogh's murder. Bouyeri is being tried separately for the murder, a trial expected to begin in July. The men, aged between 18 and 27 and mostly of Moroccan descent, met regularly in Bouyeri's house where they watched footage of beheadings and held discussions which turned increasingly extremis t, Plooy said.

"There was never any question of taking legal action, or of creating a political party. There was only a question of violence aimed at two goals: establishing an Islamic state and destabilising society," he said.

Jason Walters, 20, one of two men arrested in the raid who had attended an Islamist training camp in Pakistan, also took a leadership role in the group, dubbed the "Hofstad" network by the Dutch intelligence service. Copies of the letter found pinned to Van Gogh's chest with a knife that threatened leading Dutch politicians were found on computers owned by several of the suspects. Records of their mobile phone communication also showed they had been in contact. Defence lawyers rejected the accusations and demanded their clients be set free.

"There is still no evidence of any terrorist activities," Robert Maanicus told reporters outside the court. One of the suspects present in court denied the group existed. "There is no group, and if there were a group, I do not belong to it," Zine Labadine Aouraghe said. "I am against violence, I am against terrorism," said the 26-year-old suspect, who sat through the court session with folded arms and crossed legs.

The prosecutor demanded a 90-day extension of the 12 suspects' temporary custody while the investigation continues. Plooy said investigators still had to trawl through the equivalent of 85 removal boxes of evidence.