Amsterdam mosque gave shelter to jihadis, recruiters, Telegraaf says

A mosque in Amsterdam has been giving shelter to fundamentalist Muslims who went on to join Islamic State, the Telegraaf reported on Friday.

The paper bases its claim on a photograph which it says shows four ‘heavyweights from extremist circles’ plus one other man, said to be from the mosque organisation, in a room at the El Tawheed mosque in the west of Amsterdam.

Police sources have also backed up the story, the paper said.

Two of the men joined IS shortly after the photo was taken while the other two ‘worked on explosives and a fire bomb’. One of the men, a Dutch Muslim convert, is also known to the police as a jihad recruiter, the paper said.

The NRC said earlier this week that this man, Keith Rienksma, had been able to distribute IS propaganda in the Netherlands for the past three years without any interference from the authorities.

The paper claimed R and another man were deliberately left out of Amsterdam city council anti-radicalisation efforts at the request of the police, who said it would interfere in their investigations.

Mosque chairman Mahmoud el-Shershaby told the Telegraaf that he had no idea that such a meeting had taken place in the mosque.

The El Taweed mosque has often been at the centre of allegations that it supports extremists and the native Dutch police officers are not welcome inside, the paper said.