Van Gogh killer jailed for life

A DUTCH court sentenced the killer of Dutch film-maker Theo Van Gogh to life in prison yesterday, the harshest sentence for a murder that stunned the country, heightened ethnic tensions and raised concerns about homegrown Islamic terrorism.

Mohammed Bouyeri, aged 27, mounted no defence at his two-day trial in Amsterdam earlier this month for the murder on November 2 of Van Gogh whom he accused of insulting Islam and told the court he would do it again.

Judge Udo Willem Bentinck said life was the only fitting punishment.

Bouyeri showed no emotion as he shook his lawyer's hand following the verdict. Earlier he told the court he had intended to die in the action and become a martyr for his faith.

Bentinck said the three-judge panel had concluded there was no possibility for Bouyeri to return to society, citing his lack of remorse and the likelihood he would never change his radical views.

Bouyeri, a Dutch man of Moroccan descent, has two weeks to lodge an appeal, but that appears unlikely.

He was convicted of the murder, described in the judgment as a terrorist attack, the attempted murder of bystanders and police officers, illegal possession of firearms and impeding the work of a member of parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whom he had threatened to kill in a letter impaled in Van Gogh's chest.

The judgment said Bouyeri had shown "a complete disregard for human life".

Bouyeri ambushed the film-maker on an Amsterdam street, shot him repeatedly, stabbed him and slit his throat before thrusting his manifesto into his chest on the point of a knife.

Witnesses said he was so calm "it looked like he was out walking his dog", the judge said.

Bouyeri said he had acted in the name of Islam and felt no pain for Van Gogh's family.

"What moved me to do what I did was purely my faith," he told the court.

"I was motivated by the law that commands me to cut off the head of anyone who insults Allah and his prophet."

Van Gogh, a distant relative of the famous painter, was a social critic and columnist who attacked the treatment of women in fundamentalist Islamic households in a short film, Submission, which offended many Muslims.

Hirsi Ali, the film's scriptwriter and a Somali-born MP, went into hiding after the murder because she was named in the note left on the corpse.

The killing led to dozens of arson attacks against Islamic schools and mosques and has strained relations with the country's 1 million Muslim immigrants.