Mohammed Bouyeri

Mohammed Bouyeri (محمد بويري ; born 8 March 1978) is a Moroccan-Dutch serving a life sentence without parole in the prison of Nieuw Vosseveld (Vught) for the assassination of Dutch film director Theo van Gogh.

In 1995, Mohammed Bouyeri finished his secondary education.

At university, he changed his major several times and left after five years without obtaining a degree.

Bouyeri used the pen name "Abu Zubair" for writing and translating.

He often posted letters online and sent e-mails under this name.

At an early age he was known to the police as a member of a group of Moroccan "problem-youth".

For a while he worked as a volunteer at Eigenwijks, a neighbourhood organization in Amsterdam's Slotervaart suburb.

After his mother died and his father remarried in 2003, he started to live according to strict interpretations of Sunni Islamic Sharia law.

As a result, he could perform fewer and fewer tasks at Eigenwijks.

For example, he refused to serve alcohol and did not want to be present at activities attended by both women and men.

Finally, he put an end to his activities at Eigenwijks altogether.

He grew a beard and began to wear a djellaba.

He frequently visited the El Tawheed mosque where he met other radical Sunnis, among whom was the suspected terrorist Samir Azzouz.

Filmmaker Theo van Gogh was a vigorous and often polemic critic of several aspects and figures of Dutch society, including religion.

A member of the Hofstad Network, he was incarcerated in 2004.

Mohammed Bouyeri is a second-generation Moroccan-Dutchman of Berber origin.

In 2004, van Gogh and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali refugee who had become a member of the House of Representatives of the Netherlands, directed a short film called Submission, Part I about Islam and violence against women.

In the film, women are shown wearing transparent clothes with verses of the Quran written on their bodies.

The film first aired in August 2004 on Dutch television in prime time.

The 26-year-old Bouyeri assassinated van Gogh in the early morning of 2 November 2004 in front of the Amsterdam-Oost borough office (Dutch: stadsdeelkantoor) while he was bicycling to work.

Bouyeri shot van Gogh eight times with a handgun and also wounded two bystanders.

Wounded, van Gogh ran to the other side of the road and fell to the ground on the cycle lane.

Bouyeri then walked up to van Gogh, who was still lying down, and shot him several more times at close range.

Bouyeri then cut van Gogh's throat and tried to decapitate him with a large knife, after which he stabbed the knife deep into van Gogh's chest, reaching his spinal cord.

He then attached a five-page note to the body with a smaller knife before fleeing.

Van Gogh died on the spot.

The written note contained a warning to Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

It also made mention of the Jewish political actors in Ali's party, as well as other parties in Dutch politics.

It contained repeated references to Jewish party-backers and party leaders.

The letter refers to the fundamentalist ideology of the Takfir wal-Hijra.

It was signed Saifu Deen alMuwahhied.

Following an exchange of gunfire with police, during which he was shot in the leg, police arrested Bouyeri close to the scene of the crime shortly after its commission.

In his interrogations, he exercised his right to remain silent.

On 11 November, public prosecutor Leo de Wit charged him with six criminal acts: murder, attempted murder (of a police officer), attempted manslaughter (of by-standers and police officers), violation of the law on gun control, suspicion of participation in a criminal organization with terrorist aims, and conspiracy to murder with a terrorist purpose against van Gogh, Representative Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and others.

When arrested, Bouyeri had on him a farewell poem titled In bloed gedoopt ("Baptized in Blood").

Bouyeri's trial took place over two days, 11 and 12 July 2005, in a high-security building in Amsterdam's Osdorp neighbourhood.

In a letter on 8 July, Bouyeri announced that he would not attend the trial voluntarily and that he did not accept its jurisdiction.

The prosecutor demanded that he be forcibly transported to the courthouse, which the court granted.

Bouyeri's lawyers attended the trial, but they did not ask questions or make closing statements.

Bouyeri appeared before the court carrying a Quran under his arm.