Mohammed Bouyeri is a Moroccan-Dutch citizen serving a life sentence without parole at the Nieuw Vosseveld prison for the 2004 murder of Dutch film director Theo van Gogh.
32 Facts About Mohammed Bouyeri
1.
2.
Mohammed Bouyeri was considered to be a promising student; completed his higher secondary education at the Mondriaan Lyceum.
3.
Mohammed Bouyeri was a havo student, while many Moroccan youth in the Netherlands would only advance to lower vmbo education, including most of Bouyeri's class.
4.
Mohammed Bouyeri was one of a few local Moroccan boys who got on well with the local police, who otherwise had very negative contact with the Muslim community.
5.
Mohammed Bouyeri spent five years studying at the school, being involved in various courses, but finished none of them.
6.
Mohammed Bouyeri switched majors repeatedly, from accounting to business information technology, but did not put in much effort.
7.
In 2001 Mohammed Bouyeri got into a fight with a man who was dating one of his sisters.
8.
Mohammed Bouyeri attempted to stab one of the responding officers, before throwing the knife at their head.
9.
Mohammed Bouyeri was sentenced to prison, which he served in a detention center in Almere, and was released towards the end of 2001.
10.
Mohammed Bouyeri campaigned for the opening of a youth center in the secondary school, but this plan was rejected by the authorities.
11.
Mohammed Bouyeri began to believe that Dutch society and its institutions were anti-Moroccan.
12.
Mohammed Bouyeri used the pen name "Abu Zubair" for writing and translating, under which he wrote radical texts.
13.
Mohammed Bouyeri often posted letters online and sent emails under this name.
14.
Mohammed Bouyeri would move in spring 2002 out of his parents house to a small apartment in Slotermeer; after this, he became increasingly active online.
15.
Mohammed Bouyeri would produce pamphlets containing antisemitic and anti-Dutch content.
16.
Mohammed Bouyeri grew a beard and began to wear a djellaba.
17.
Mohammed Bouyeri frequently visited the El Tawheed Mosque where he met other radical Sunnis, among whom was the suspected terrorist Samir Azzouz.
18.
Mohammed Bouyeri murdered van Gogh on the early morning of 2 November 2004 in front of the Amsterdam-Oost borough office while van Gogh was bicycling to work.
19.
Mohammed Bouyeri shot van Gogh eight times with a handgun and wounded two bystanders.
20.
Mohammed Bouyeri then walked up to van Gogh, who was still lying down, and shot him several more times at close range.
21.
Mohammed Bouyeri then used a large knife to slit van Gogh's throat and attempted to decapitate him, after which he stabbed the knife deep into van Gogh's chest, reaching his spinal cord.
22.
Mohammed Bouyeri then used a fillet knife to attach a five-page note to van Gogh's body before fleeing.
23.
Also included in this cabal, according to Mohammed Bouyeri, were several politicians who were actually not Jewish.
24.
Mohammed Bouyeri was charged under the Netherlands' new anti-terrorism law.
25.
The publishing of Mohammed Bouyeri's photograph was personally approved by justice minister Piet Hein Donner.
26.
Mohammed Bouyeri's trial took place over two days, 11 and 12 July 2005, in a high-security building in Amsterdam's Osdorp neighbourhood.
27.
Mohammed Bouyeri's attorneys attended the trial, but they did not ask questions or make closing arguments.
28.
Mohammed Bouyeri appeared before the court carrying a Quran under his arm.
29.
In 2014, the investigation was reopened to discuss whether Mohammed Bouyeri could have had help.
30.
Mohammed Bouyeri is held in the EBI facility within Nieuw Vosseveld prison.
31.
Taghi and Mohammed Bouyeri continued to write to each other in Arabic, with their writings mostly consisting of Quran verses.
32.
In 2017, Mohammed Bouyeri barricaded himself in his jail's kitchen while threatening prison staff by saying that whoever forbade him from praying would get "a dagger between the ribs".