Theo van Gogh

Theo van Gogh was an outspoken Dutch film director and columnist.^[1] Born in 1957, he was called Theo after his uncle Theo van Gogh who was a resistance fighter executed by the Nazi occupiers during WWII.

He was murdered on November 2, 2004 (aged 47), which, like the 2004 Madrid train bombings which were committed exactly 911 days after "9/11", took place exactly 911 days after the murder of Pim Fortuyn. The killing was in retaliation for his short-film Submission which was deemed blasphemous due to its depiction of a woman with Qur'anic verses written on her flesh.

A Muslim cleric, Imam Fawaz, gave a sermon several weeks before the murder (in reaction to viewing the short-film) in which he called Theo Van Gogh a 'criminal bastard' and called on Allah to visit an incurable disease upon him.^[2]

Van Gogh's killer, Mohammed Bouyeri, shot him eight times as he cycled along a busy boulevard in broad daylight in Amsterdam. When he fell, mortally wounded, Bouyeri slit his throat, almost decapitating him, and then plunged two knives into his chest, one of them with a letter attached.

The letter by Bouyeri threatened Western governments, Jews and Ayaan Hirsi Ali- the writer of the film who also received several death threats and was given 24 hour protection by government bodyguards.^[3]

In court Mohammed Bouyeri declared that he had murdered Van Gogh not because he felt insulted but "because of Allah".^[4]