ROTTERDAM - Hardi N. (36), the Arnhem man who masterminded a plan for a bloody terrorist attack in the Netherlands, will receive a reduced sentence from the judge because the AIVD slightly overstepped its bounds.

The court in Rotterdam on Thursday afternoon handed down its verdict in the criminal trial of six men suspected of preparing a terrorist attack using a car bomb, machine guns, small arms, grenades and bomb vests. The prosecution in June demanded prison sentences of eight to 20 years against the members of the Arnhem terror cell, totaling 87 years. The judge let the sentences be slightly lower, at 76 years total.

Hardi N.

Main suspect Hardi N. is getting a year less sentence than demanded (17 years instead of 18) because intelligence service AIVD made a stitch-up. The service had Hardi in its sights and had him chat online with two so-called IS members in high positions. Those online brothers put Hardi in contact with a police infiltrator, who promised to supply Hardi and his now-formed group with weapons and explosives.The AIVD officers "actively contributed to Hardi N. getting and staying in contact with the police infiltrator," the judge said. ''They seem to have influenced him in sticking to a particular target for an attack, even at times when Hardi seemed to stray or need more time.'' Moreover, the AIVD continued to interfere with the police infiltration process from the sidelines.

'AIVD should have withdrawn'

This is a problem because police infiltrators must be verifiable under legal rules. The AIVD's work is not verifiable to the judge in that way. That therefore "compromised the safeguarding of due process," the judge said. The AIVD should have withdrawn as soon as the police took over.However, it is not the case that Hardi N. was, as he himself claims, completely brainwashed by the service's infiltrators or the police. He did want to carry out an attack himself from the beginning. The police infiltrator did not direct him in this, only helped him.

Weapon of police infiltrator

His co-defendant Waïl el-A also received a lower sentence than justice had demanded. El-A had tried to shoot during the arrest of the group members with one of the weapons given to them by the police infiltrator. He did not know at the time that the pistols and Kalashnikovs had been disabled. Justice considers it an attempted murder of the members of the arrest team. The judge rejected that. Waïl did pull the trigger but, at the time, did not aim properly at one of the men from the Special Interventions Service who carried out the arrest. Waïl el-A. gets 13 years in prison instead of the requested 20.

The arrest occurred in September 2018 at a vacation park in Weert, where they fitted bomb vests and practiced with deactivated Kalashnikovs and Glock pistols in the presence of police infiltrators. The other two suspects were arrested at home addresses in Arnhem. During house searches, police found fertilizer and chemicals, which the prosecution said were intended to make explosives. With their arrest, the Netherlands escaped a major attack, the prosecution stated. "The suspects envisioned an attack the Netherlands had never experienced before, inspired by attacks by IS in Paris. They themselves did not want to fall into the hands of the police alive, by wearing bomb vests," the prosecutor said during one of the 11 sessions. The plan was initially to carry out an attack at an event such as Gay Pride and detonate a car bomb elsewhere.