AMSTERDAM, Mar 23 (Reuters) Dutch prosecutors called for a 7-year jail sentence today for a Dutch-Moroccan teenager accused of planning attacks on Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, a nuclear reactor and government buildings.
Samir Azzouz, 18, went on trial in a high-security court in Rotterdam in February after authorities found items in his home last July, which prosecutors say indicated that he was planning such attacks.
Prosecutors have also linked Azzouz to a militant Islamist network dubbed the ”Hofstad group” by Dutch intelligence that is suspected of murder plots against politicians critical of Islam.
”We see this as a serious crime, made more serious by the fact that we believe he was a member of the Hofstad group,” a spokesman for the prosecution said.
The investigation, which indicated Azzouz was close to carrying out some form of attack, prompted the government to raise a national security alert last July.
Among the items found by police were machinegun cartridges, a silencer, mock explosive devices, documents related to jihad or holy war and plans and maps of prominent buildings which had notes written on them concerning security.