felix qui possit rerum cognoscere causas
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May 22, 2003
Dutch AEL leader arrested
One of the leaders-designate of the Dutch branch of the AEL, the Islamist Arab-European League has been arrested, together with his brother. He is accused of theft and extortion after an incident last November. At a McDonald's restaurant in the eastern town of Hengelo, he and his brother allegedly had arranged a meeting with an entrepreneur from the nearby town of Enschede in order to transact a deal involving laptop computers. When they met, the two brothers are said to have to threatened their victim with a firearm and forced him to hand over his money to them. Dutch media can't give the full names of those who are being investigated, so the AEL guy is only known as "Nabil M." It's not as though his past is entirely squeaky clean. He used to deal in stolen laptops and had a website offering to remove passwords from laptops. He actually admits to all this, but calls these activities "youthful indiscretions." Apparently the tail end of his exuberant youthful behavior was still in evidence last November. We'll see whether the prosecution can get a conviction in this case. Posted by qsi at May 22, 2003 12:10 AM
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It's Nabil Marmouch (28), from The Hague. Unusually, several media do report his full name, as the AEL itself mentioned it in a press release on the 'brutal arrest' of their 'streetwise brother.' Perhaps the old media have learned from the 'Volkert van der G.' case - even though his full name still isn't mentioned in print after his conviction, everybody knows it's Volkert van der Graaf who murdered Pim Fortuyn. Marmouch registered the domain ael.nl and contributed to it as webmaster. On March 20, Marmouch was shortly arrested for burning an Israeli flag in front of the US Embassy - which is not illegal as a hate crime but did violate local public safety regulations. Earlier, anti-immigration extremist Michiel Smit (nieuwrechts.nl), claimed that Marmouch had posted antisemitic slurs on webforums, calling Iraelis 'cockroaches' and 'bloodsuckers'. More trouble for the AEL-NL: Saudi-funded fundamentalist Mohammed Cheppih withdrew his leadership candidacy because of internal disagreements. Posted by: Woordenboer on May 24, 2003 09:29 PMRegarding Volkert van der Graf: Do the Dutch news media have a policy of not printing the names of criminals? Posted by: Paul Stinchfield on May 25, 2003 06:12 AMThey are under a legal mandate to "maintain the privacy" of suspects; that's why they're only referred to with initials. I don't know whether or not such protection continues after they have been convicted, but it may. I notice that in Britain, the government is going to great lengths to maintain the anonymity of some woman serial killer. Posted by: Wim on May 27, 2003 04:45 AMWim: Thank you. If anybody can provide further details I would be very interested, including distinctions in the law between privacy rights during investigation, during trial, and after conviction. Paul, I don't know the exact details of the privacy rights during the various phases of the investigation, but even convicted criminals tend to be referred to as "Firstname A of Town," where A would be the initial of his last name. Pictures in the papers of suspects and convicts have a black bar running through the eyes, again to protect their identity. Here's one of Volkert van der Graaf. Posted by: qsi on May 27, 2003 08:40 AMObviously, this is confusing for Dutch readers as well. Googling around I found an instructive article in Dutch. Summarizing this article and others, the rule against publishing full names of criminals is a case of semi-legal self-regulation by the media, based on a broad consensus among journalists and regulated by a Press Council (Raad voor de Journalistiek, short history in English) made up of journalists and lawyers, which issues non-binding opinions. (Of course, self-regulation is a way of fending off legislation.) There is no exception for convicted criminals, apparently to protect them from reprisals and harassment. But there are some exceptions, e.g. celebreties and people who volunteer to publish their name. Complications abound. Police tend to withhold the names of suspects completely before trials. Victims have far fewer privacy rights. So if Mrs. De Jong is murdered and later it turns out that her husband was the killer, he could in theory be referred to as "Jan de J., who murdered his wife Marie de Jong." Posted by: Woordenboer on May 27, 2003 08:55 PMA belated thanks to you all. Fascinating. Posted by: Paul Stinchfield on June 14, 2003 06:02 AMPost a comment
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