Amsterdam police have published footage of one of the two men suspected of planting explosives outside an office complex in the city’s Zuidas business district on March 16.
The footage was broadcast during television crime show Opsporing Verzocht and features a young man in dark clothes with a rucksack arriving with another on a fatbike. The explosion outside the Atrium complex, where the Bank of New York and several real estate companies are based, caused minor damage to the door.
Last week’s televised appeal for information about two men who were filmed planting an explosive outside a Jewish school in Amsterdam on March 14 resulted in 150 tips, police say.
Meanwhile, two Amsterdam teenagers have been arrested for planning what the public prosecution service said is a “terrorist attack” on a building in Heemstede which houses a school and synagogue.
The youngsters, aged 14 and 17, were arrested in the early hours of March 20 and appeared in court for a remand hearing on Monday, where they were ordered to be held in custody for 14 days.
The youths were picked up on the Adriaan Pauwlaan, a short walk from the building which police suspect was their target, after exhibiting “suspicious behaviour”, police said in a statement. A search of the area later turned up a quantity of powerful fireworks.
The building, which also houses the Chabad Hebrew School, is not easily identifiable as a Jewish building but does have a security camera, broadcaster NOS said.
Police have also arrested a fifth person in connection with a minor explosion outside a synagogue in Rotterdam on March 13. Four teenagers were picked up last week.
Justice minister David van Weel said earlier that four of the youngsters, all with Antillean roots and all from Tilburg, appear to have been recruited to plant the explosives.
Police are still investigating possible links between the explosions, two of which have been claimed by an Islamic group calling itself Harakat Ashab Al Yamin Al Islamiyya.
Not organised
Political anthropologist Younes Saramifar from Amsterdam’s VU university said the group was “completely unknown” until this month. “Based on what I have seen, this is absolutely not an organised and coherent group,” he told NOS before the Zuidas explosion.
Saramifar said language mistakes in statements accompanying the videos suggest the makers are not native Arabic speakers and may not be part of a trained militant network.
The footage itself also appears amateurish, judging by the camerawork, clothing and behaviour of those involved. “It looks as if it was poorly planned and that they have had no training,” he said.
