A court in Rotterdam imposed a three-year sentence on Tuesday on a Moroccan-Dutch man for trying to recruit fellow prisoners for a Muslim holy war. Bilal L., 21, was serving a 10-month jail sentence for threatening MP Geert Wilders when he asked fellow prisoners to supply weapons and explosives. The panel of three judges also accepted L. tried to recruit inmates to carry out attacks on the "enemies of Islam". L. is a friend of Mohammed Bouyeri who was jailed for life last year for killing film director Theo van Gogh on 2 November 2004.Earlier this year the authorities thought they could pin L. to the murder too. Prosecutors announced a surprise witness said L. provided the bicycle used by Bouyeri in the killing. The evidence was to be presented at another trial in Amsterdam in which L., Bouyeri and 11 other Muslim men are accused of belonging to a terrorist organisation. The suspects all deny the charges and claim they were friends with a common interest in studying Islam. When the surprise witness was called he admitted he had concocted his claim about L.'s alleged link to Van Gogh's murder. "It was a classic cock-and-bull story," Jamal B. told the court in Amsterdam. He said he agreed to make the statement after police harassed his family for six months and put pressure on him to implicate Bilal L.
A month after the killing, newspaper 'De Telegraaf' reported L. was suspected of involvement in a plot to attack the Red Light District in Amsterdam. The newspaper said L. allegedly conducted reconnaissance of the capital's prostitution zone while riding through the area on his scooter to deliver pizzas. He was arrested on 5 November. Although 'De Telegraaf' gave him fetching description of a "radical Moroccan pizza courier" nothing was heard of the case again.