Most media attention was attracted by Mohammed Bouyeri, sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering film director Theo van Gogh in 2004 and by Samir Azzouz, suspected of planning terrorist attacks on the Dutch parliament and several strategic targets such as the national airport and a nuclear reactor.
[citation needed] On 14 October 2003, Samir Azzouz, Ismail Akhnikh, Jason Walters and Redouan al-Issar were put under arrest for planning a (according to the AIVD) "terrorist attack in the Netherlands", but were released soon after.
Azzouz was eventually tried in this case, but acquitted for lack of evidence in 2005: he did possess what he thought to be a home-made bomb, but having used the wrong type of fertilizer, the device would never have exploded.
[citation needed] At the beginning of 2003, a Hofstad member and his friend tried to join an Islamic rebel group in Chechnya, but were discovered by authorities and arrested.
[citation needed] On 14 October of that year, the Spanish authorities arrested a Moroccan man who was suspected to be involved in suspicious activity.
[citation needed] In 2003, Mohammed Bouyeri, the man who murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, was radicalized.
[citation needed] On 29 August 2004, Van Gogh and Ayaan Hirsi Ali created a short film, Submission, that contained scenes of Quranic verses being painted onto semi-naked women.
[3] Before fleeing the scene, he left a note pinned to Van Gogh's chest that had a death threat for Hirsi Ali.
[1] Shortly after the murder of Van Gogh, the organization gained the attention of national media when an attempt to arrest suspected members Jason Walters and Ismail Akhnikh led to a 14-hour siege at a house in The Hague.
on suspicion of preparing an attack against (yet unnamed) national politicians and the building of the General Intelligence and Security Agency AIVD on 14 October 2005.
During the trial, the presiding judge admitted that he felt as if it was obvious that arrest leading to the hearing had created a spectacle and that the group members ideologies were being greatly scrutinized.
[12] Nadir Adarraf, Rachid Belkacem, Mohamed El Bousklaoui, Zakaria Taybi and Jermaine Walters were acquitted and set free.
According to the Court of Appeal, the Hofstad Group had insufficient organizational substance to conclude that there was an organization as referred to in Articles 140 and 140a of the Criminal Code.
The Court has sentenced one of the defendants, Jason Walters, to a prison term of 15 years for the attempted murder of members of an arrest team of the police in The Hague and possession of hand grenades.
Jason Walters, who had thrown a shrapnel grenade in the direction of the arrest team in accordance with a predetermined plan, was sentenced to 13 years in prison on five counts of attempted murder.
Upon the ruling, the court determined that the Hofstad group was a terror criminal organization who had the intent of committing crimes out of violence and hatred.
[24] The flowers included a note, "greetings, the Hofstadgroup," which was a 'thank you' for the VARA Zembla documentary broadcast the week prior, on the topic of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's asylum background.