How little the VVD wanted to have to do with party member Soumaya Sahla, once convicted as a member of the terrorist Hofstad group, became apparent two weeks ago during question time in the House of Representatives. PVV leader Geert Wilders wanted to know from Dilan Yesilgöz, VVD party leader and outgoing Minister of Justice, whether Sahla was still an advisor to the VVD, as he said she had said on the radio the Saturday before. Yesilgöz said this was not the case. And what was particularly striking in her answers to Wilders: Soumaya Sahla was very consistently “involved” for Yesilgöz. She didn’t mention her name once.
This Monday it was announced that the VVD has expelled Soumaya Sahla as a member, following news in HP/De Tijd: according to the family of ex-VVD leader Frits Bolkestein, Sahla “stolen” from him at least 85,000 euros. Bolkestein had Sahla under his wing for years, he believed that she deserved a new chance after being convicted and serving her prison sentence. Soumaya Sahla chimes in HP/De Tijd that Bolkestein gave her the money “to help me develop my talents”: he paid her rent and living expenses when she started her PhD and had no income of her own. According to the VVD, Bolkestein’s family is right.
It is the second time that the VVD has had to deal with news about Sahla in the middle of an election campaign: in January 2022, two months before the municipal elections, Wilders had already started talking about her in the large debate hall of the House of Representatives. Soumaya Sahla was then a member of the thematic party network Security and Justice and VVD faction leader Sophie Hermans visibly did not know what to do with it. It particularly bothered the VVD that Sahla, who calls herself ‘deradicalized’ and also acts as a ‘deradicalization expert’, had never publicly distanced herself from her past as a member of the Hofstad group.
She did so afterwards: she said that she regretted “the choices” she had made and talked about “black pages” in her life.
‘My party too’
A year later she said in an interview in the A.D that she had done this under pressure from the VVD. She talked about the personal involvement of VVD leader Mark Rutte, revealed text messages from him and the VVD’s head of information, Kees Berghuis, and said that the text of her statement had been prepared by the VVD. She also said that she wanted to participate in the VVD again. She wanted to “make her contribution.” “The VVD is also my party.”
Since then, the VVD has thought very differently about this. Someone who came up with such a story in a newspaper no longer had to count on a warm reception from the party leadership, let alone the opportunity to make a ‘contribution’ again. The distant way in which Yesilgöz talked about her two weeks ago can almost certainly be explained by this – although the upcoming publication in HP/De Tijd have played a role. In the radio program Dr Kelder and Co, Saturday, October 14, Soumaya Sahla had said that she was “still involved” with the VVD, and she mentioned her membership of the VVD thematic network Migration and Integration. According to her, “an extremely important network within the VVD.”
Yesilgöz, in Question Time, clearly did not see it that way. Every VVD member, she told the MPs, can participate in those networks. “That is something completely different from being an official advisor.”
Due to the news about Bolkestein’s money, the VVD does not have to delve again into the role that Sahla still has or no longer has as an active party member. She “wasted” the “second chance” that Sahla had been given, according to party chairman Eric Wetzels. In the middle of the campaign for the House of Representatives elections on November 22, the party can now appear firm by depriving it of membership.
Wetzels added in his response HP/De Tijd goes one step further by announcing that the party management may want to amend the statutes: “To arrange that, in any case, those convicted of terrorist or sexual crimes can never become members of the party.”
If Wilders had planned to start talking about her again in election debates, he no longer has that card in his hands.
Also BBB link
At BBB they had paid extra attention during question time: Caroline van der Plas and her close colleague Henk Vermeer already knew that the story in HP/De Tijd would also be about their party. Soumaya Sahla was a friend and colleague of a BBB defense advisor, Roy de Ruiter, who in turn was friends with number three on the BBB candidate list: Lieutenant Colonel Gijs Tuinman. According to that article, Sahla had started looking for BBB candidates for a possible ‘business cabinet’ for BBB, as Van der Plas would like. She had sounded out Esther van Fenema, psychiatrist and columnist.
BBB did not like Sahla’s involvement and has “frozen” contact with Roy de Ruiter for the time being, says Henk Vermeer. NRC. “Although he really never tried to influence us.” He says he has never had contact with Soumaya Sahla himself. “Neither does Caroline.” “We have not asked anyone to recruit for us. We will do that ourselves.”
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VVD hesitates: what next with Sahla?