Terror in The Netherlands as Islamic Jihadist Opens Fire on a Tram

A deadly day in Utrecht

3 dead, 5 wounded

The Dutch government has kept its terror threat warning at Level 4 — “substantial” risk— since 2013. And this morning, it appears that the long-anticipated attack finally happened. 

A man opened fire aboard a crowded tram in the city of Utrecht, killing three people, and seriously wounding five others.

Police have arrested a suspect — a 37-year-old man who was born in Turkey — after a day-long, countrywide manhunt, tracing hijacked cars and staging multiple raids.

Jan van Zanen, the mayor of Utrecht, said that authorities are "assuming" a terrorist motive and the threat level for the area around the city — about an hour's drive south of Amsterdam — was temporarily raised to five, the highest designation. 

If the reasons for the attack do indeed turn out to be related to Jihadism, or an attempt to extract some sort of revenge for the murders of 50 people at two New Zealand mosques on Friday, or something else altogether – it will mark a turning point in the Netherlands. 

The country has been largely untouched by the violence and mayhem that has been visited upon many other European nations over the past decade.

Its last terror-related death was the 2004 murder of the controversial filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, who was shot and had his throat slit by a radicalized Dutch-Moroccan citizen who maintained Van Gogh had insulted Islam with his documentary Submission. 

Last September, a 19-year-old Afghan refugee who had been living in Germany pulled out a knife at Amsterdam's main train station and stabbed two American tourists, causing non-life threatening injuries. (The attacker, who was said to have a "terrorist motive," was shot by police but survived.) 

And a week later, Dutch authorities arrested seven men, accusing them of seeking bomb-making material, hand grenades, AK47s and small arms for a major attack against an unspecified "large event" in the Netherlands. The alleged ringleader, a 34-year-old who was originally from Iraq, had previously been convicted of trying to travel to his homeland to join ISIS.

A year before that, there was a supposed plot by two men to attack a Rotterdam concert by the Los Angeles garage rockers, the Allah-Las, who now kind of regret their choice of band name.

According to the latest terror threat assessment,  released last week by the National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism, the situation in the Netherlands is "unsettled," with serious risks posed by returning ISIS soldiers (some 300 Dutch citizens are believed to have travelled to Syria and Iraq) and right-wing extremists. 

In recent years, the Dutch have devoted a lot of energy to debating the place of Muslim immigrants, who now make up about seven per cent of the country's 17 million population, slightly above the European average. And in the last national election, the far-right Party for Freedom, led by Geert Wilders who has called for a ban on mosques and the Quran, won the second most seats.

(Today, Wilders announced that he is temporarily suspending his campaign for a seat in the Dutch senate out of respect to the Utrecht victims.)

However, the reality is that the Netherlands has long been one of the most secure countries in the world. 

With all those events listed above, that's a rather pathetic boast.

Terrorism Index

The 2018 Global Terrorism Index, ranked the country number 78 in terms of danger, just behind Rwandaand Papua New Guinea, and just ahead of Austria, the Kyrgyz Republic and Haiti. 

I suspect it will move well up the scale for 2019.

In comparison, neighbouring Belgium ranks 48th, Germany 39th, France 30th and the U.K. was in 28th place. 

In all likelihood, the Netherlands will now move up a few rungs in the 2019 edition, maybe catching Italy at number 69, or Ireland for the 65th spot. 

But it will come nowhere close to the most-violent nations, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Syria and Pakistan, the places where terror claims the greatest number of victims by far. 

All of which are Muslim countries! And all of which send thousands of migrants to Europe for a better life. They then bring Islam with them, which guarantees them and Europe anything but a better life.