ROTTERDAM, 06/06/03 - The district court in Rotterdam yesterday acquitted all 12 Muslims suspected of supporting the Jihad of the charge. The preliminary custody of all eight suspects still in prison was ended with immediate effect.

Prosecutor J. Valente had accused 10 of the 12 Muslims standing trial in Rotterdam of participating in a criminal organization. According to the Public Prosecutor (OM), their network in the Netherlands consisted of a number of cells, and its aim was to recruit and support fighters for the Jihad, and to prepare them to participate in this armed conflict against the enemies of Islam.

Some suspects among the Muslim group were, according to Valente, trained as Jihad fighters and were to be deployed for al-Qaeda and the Taliban. To support the organization financially, one cell would among other things engage in cocaine smuggling, while others took care of false identification documents and helped organize travel for the Muslim fighters, according to the OM.

The court however found that no convincing evidence had been produced for the suspicions of the organization. The judges only gave two of the 12 light prison sentences. The Frenchman A.O. was given two months in jail for the possession of a fake passport, and the Algerian T.B., four months for possession of a fake travel document and forgery. Cocaine smuggling was also not proven, the court concluded. The OM is appealing against the verdict.

The verdict appears to be a new setback in the fight against terrorism in the Netherlands. The same court in Rotterdam had also acquitted four suspected terrorists on 18 December because the OM had arrested them solely on the basis of information from the then domestic intelligence service BVD, now the AIVD. This was in the eyes of the judges illegal.

The four were the first terrorist suspects to be tried in the Netherlands. Two of them are according to the OM linked with al-Qaeda, and were believed to have been directly involved in the preparations for an attack on the US embassy in Paris. Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner acknowledged after the four were acquitted that combating terrorism in the Netherlands had been put under pressure. He said he was considering a change in the law if the appeal court in The Hague gives the same verdict on the case, to be heard later this year.

In the case against the 12 men, the OM again had to depend on evidence supplied by the AIVD. Because the secret service gives no information about how it obtained its information, its origin and actual accuracy cannot be checked, and it may therefore not be used as evidence, the court ruled. The judges did allow telephone tapping by the intelligence service as legitimate, but this did not yield the necessary evidence, they concluded.

Despite their acquittal, seven of the 12 will remain in prison. They were taken into custody as undesirable aliens, and the intention is to expel them from the country as quickly as possible, said the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND).