ARNHEM - The first session day of the Arnhem terror trial has been aborted due to technical problems with the sound system in the extra-security court in Rotterdam. The extensive trial will continue on Friday.
Earlier this year, the corona crisis put a halt to plans to hold the trial in April. The court set aside 11 days for the case. Wednesday was the first hearing. At the end of the morning, the sound system stopped working, making the lawyers and judges inaudible to those present. After an adjournment, the problems turned out to be more extensive than expected, whereupon the president of the court decided to adjourn the case until the second day of session, scheduled for Friday.
Read Silvan Schoonhoven's tweets back below.
A massacre as bad as Paris or Brussels, but at an outdoor festival somewhere in the Netherlands. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of lives were saved by the actions of one undercover agent. The Justice Department and AIVD were apathetic when, on September 27, 2018, they could report that arrest teams had handcuffed a group of Arnhemmers. For the first time, a true Dutch terrorist cell had been rounded up. Their leader: the Arnhem jihadist Hardi N.
Shortly before, Hardi and his friends had excitedly kissed their new kalashnikovs and crawled like playing children through a cottage in Weert. There, a mysterious helper had finally delivered them the promised rifles, pistols and bomb vests. Then the vacation park turned out to be full of heavily armed members of an arrest team. The helper was a police infiltrator. One of the men still tried to shoot, but the weapons appeared to be disabled.
Five months earlier, the infiltrator had come into contact with Hardi N. Other AIVD online spies had gotten wind that Hardi was running around with plans to become a martyr and was looking for weaponry. "May Allah reward you and you stand firm," one of them wrote in April 2018 to Hardi N. "We are working on your requests. I will get news about the candles on the cake for your party soon. Please create a new email address."
Through that new e-mail address, the undercover's first message to Hardi arrived. Wallpapered with microphones, the agent recorded every conversation and encounter for months. The man had strict instructions not to boo. He was not allowed to deviate from the line for a moment: "I can help you, but you have to say what's going to happen.
Years in jail
For the lawyers, it seems a hopeless task to subtract anything more from the years of prison sentences hanging over the men's heads. But despite the pile of wiretaps and other evidence, they still ask for acquittal. The boys were incited by the infiltrator, they say. On their own, they would never have taken steps toward an attack. The secretive police officer who for months has been plotting with Hardi N. and his group will not be present during the 11 days of hearings set aside for this major terrorism case. But it will be about him often and at length during the court days.
https://www.telegraaf.nl/nieuws/34240985/arnhemse-terreurzaak-afgebroken-geluidsinstallatie-kapot
