Taken from Finance News

The suspected killer of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was accused today of leading a "terrorist organisation" of young Muslim men.

Mohammed Bouyeri, the Dutch-Moroccan charged with shooting and stabbing Van Gogh on November 2, hosted meetings in his home for 12 Muslim men, whose only aims were to destabilise society and establish an Islamic state through violence, prosecutors said. All 12 were later arrested following the film-maker's death.

"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 trying to kill arresting police officers with a grenade. Bouyeri is being tried separately for the murder and his trial is expected to begin in July.

"The way Theo van Gogh was killed gives every appearance that a sheep was used in Bouyeri's house to practise on or to demonstrate how a human can be slaughtered," said Alexander van Dam, a second prosecutor on the case. Traces of sheep's blood had been found in the hallway of Bouyeri's home, an area far too small for a ritual slaughter, but defence lawyers denied the suggestion, saying there was "not a shred of evidence".

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 discussed texts, including some by al-Qaeda scholars, Mr 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.

Another of the accused, Jason Walters, 20, who prosecutors say 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 a letter threatening leading Dutch politicians that was pinned to Van Gogh's chest with a knife were later found on computers belonging to several of the suspects.