Remorseless Conviction

Mohammed Bouyeri’s trial for shooting, stabbing and almost beheading Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh seemed a mere formality. The prosecutor’s case was watertight and Bouyeri had instructed his lawyer not to act in his defense at last week’s trial. These expectations were overturned when Bouyeri, 27, a Dutch citizen of Moroccan origin, made a surprise statement at the close of the trial. Clad in a black jellaba and Palestinian-style black-and-white kaffiyeh head scarf, Bouyeri aimed his words mainly at Van Gogh’s mother, Anneke, who had expressed her anger and contempt for the defendant a day earlier.

Calmly, remorselessly, he insisted on the righteousness of his act, repeatedly stating he would do the very same thing again if he got the chance. Bouyeri said that in his worldview, there is a “law that instructs me to chop off the head of anyone who insults Allah and the Prophet.” He stressed he did not hate Van Gogh, who he described as a man driven by conviction, though the filmmaker infuriated many Muslims with his controversial film Submission which linked the abuse of Muslim women to Koranic verse.

Bouyeri’s speech left the courtroom audience stunned. When he told the police officers who pursued him after the killing that his aim indeed was to kill and be killed, some of them found it difficult to hide their tears. In a culture where a policeman, as one testifying officer put it, can be proud he has not used his firearm for 28 years, such dedication to violence is unheard of. Court spokesperson Marjoke van Kamp said: “He is making it very difficult for the court to be mild.” The verdict is due on July 26 and is widely expected to deliver a life sentence without parole.

One question remains: How could Bouyeri, whom the prosecutor described as “an ordinary, on the face of it, well- integrated boy of Moroccan descent,” revert to such radicalism? Lots of explanations were offered at the trial. The timing of his religious revival coincided with his mother’s death. Bouyeri was also in close contact with a group of Islamic radicals, many of whom are now in jail on suspicion of terrorist activities. But all this seemed to leave the suspect unfazed. As Bouyeri told the judges: “You can send in all your psychologists, psychiatrists and experts. You will never understand this, you cannot understand it.”