Teen Held After Bomb Is Found in His Room, Dutch Prosecutors Say
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AMSTERDAM — Dutch prosecutors said Wednesday that a 17-year-old had been arrested after police found a homemade bomb in his room.
They said the teenager had emerged as a suspect during an investigation into the so-called Hofstad network of radical Islamists, which had contacts with the man who confessed to killing filmmaker Theo van Gogh.
The prosecutors’ statement said the explosive device -- a tube filled with gunpowder, pellets and a timer -- was found Monday.
Wim de Bruin, spokesman for the national prosecutor’s office, said the teenager’s behavior on the Internet, where he ran several discussion forums that featured “threatening texts, films and pictures,” led police to search his parents’ home.
De Bruin declined to comment on a report by the Dutch news agency ANP saying the youth had converted to Islam when he was 14. He denied an ANP report that the youth had sent threatening messages to right-wing politician Geert Wilders.
Wilders, who is opposed to Turkey, a mainly Muslim country, joining the European Union, has been under police protection since Van Gogh’s murder in November.
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