VVD celebrity Frits Bolkestein has been her mentor since 2011, and she has been active in the party since 2017. Yet, according to the VVD, the presence of Soumaya Sahla is now suddenly ‘a dilemma’.
During the debate on the government statement a week ago, VVD party leader Sophie Hermans was still firm in answer to questions from PVV leader Geert Wilders. ‘I would like to make it very clear that Soumaya Sahla does not work for me or the VVD and has no access to the House of Representatives.’
Last Sunday, five days later, her choice of words expressed considerably more doubt. In the TV show WNL on Sunday Hermans said: ‘I am upset about this.’ The presence of Soumaya Sahla in the VVD gave her an ‘uncomfortable feeling’, according to Hermans, referring, among other things, to the party’s tough positions on terrorism and radicalisation. ‘You can look at it in a very constitutional way: convicted, sentenced, period. However, I think we should think about this. It’s a dilemma.’
in doubt
Who is the woman about whom the VVD is in doubt? In 2014, Soumaya Sahla was sentenced by the Amsterdam court to three years in prison for illegal possession of weapons and ‘participation in an organization whose object is to commit terrorist crimes’. That organization was the Hofstad group, responsible, among other things, for the murder of Theo van Gogh in 2004. At the time, Sahla was Islamically married to Hofstad member Nouredine El F. (who would later be sentenced to eight years in prison). She was arrested in Amsterdam in 2005 together with him and another woman. There was a submachine gun in the trunk of their car.
At the time of the ruling by the court, she had already served her sentence, because of the years of legal proceedings. After a first court case, she was arrested again in 2006, in a house in The Hague where weapons were in the cellar. She was sentenced to four years in prison by the court in The Hague in 2008, a decision that was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2011. The highest court referred the case back to the court in Amsterdam. The judgment there (three years) was finally confirmed by the Supreme Court in January 2016.
Meanwhile, Sahla had long since begun a new life. In her own words, she approached VVD celebrity Frits Bolkestein in 2011 at a book presentation. In a double interview with the weekly EW Magazine from December 2019, Sahla said: ‘Frits has looked into my lawsuit and has become angry about it.’ A ‘show process’, according to herself. “I was the first female terror suspect and I served as an example.” Bolkestein took her under his wing, as he did with his Syrian protégé Hala Naoum Néhmé, now a VVD municipal councilor in Amsterdam.
Islamic nest
Soumaya Sahla was born in 1983 in The Hague, her parents in Morocco. She is the fifth child in a family of eight, ‘an Islamic religious nest’ according to the VVD website. In her youth she developed her religious interest. She immersed herself in Islamic theology. When she was 18 she traveled with her father to Mecca.
Her eldest sister Karima Sahla described the family in 2017 in Police magazine as ‘traditional’. The parents will be concerned if Soumaya continues to wear a niqab in The Hague after the visit to Saudi Arabia and exchanges her moderate mosque in the Schilderswijk for one that is ‘a judge in the teaching’. That Soumaya is a serious girl is no reassurance. “The fear that there was more going on here than an extreme form of adolescent behavior continued to gnaw,” says Karima.
That will become reality in 2005. But after Soumaya has served her prison sentence, she develops in a completely different direction. She had already started studying political science in the Penitentiary Institution in Vught. Bolkestein introduced her to his circles, made her familiar with music and literature. In 2015, he took her to the Ridderzaal on Prince’s Day to listen to King Willem-Alexander’s Speech from the Throne.
Table Chair
In the EWinterview Soumaya tells that she gives advice to ‘politicians of various parties on security’. According to her, ideologies such as Salafism are at odds with Western values and hinder the integration of Muslims in the Netherlands. She is currently doing PhD research with professor of legal philosophy Andreas Kinneging in Leiden on ‘the religiously orthodox world view’ and teaches about Aristotle.
Around 2017, Soumaya Sahla became a member of the VVD. Since she has emerged as ‘table chairperson for terrorism and radicalization’. When asked, a spokesperson for the party board explains that the VVD works with ‘thematic networks’, a total of 24, spread over various policy areas. The chairman and secretary of such a network are appointed by the central board, and they are also free in how they organize themselves. In the Justice and Security network, the system of table chairmen has been devised, as is also customary in societies, with former judge Rian Vogels, for example, as ‘table chairperson for the judiciary and the rule of law’.
The network acts ‘as a sounding board for our security spokespersons in the House of Representatives’, but therefore has no official advisory function, as Wilders claimed in the House last week. Meetings are organized under the banner of the party, at which experts and politicians act as speakers.
Religion and education
For example, the Justice and Security network, together with the Education network, organized a debate in September 2019 between the then VVD party leader Klaas Dijkhoff and CU leader Gert-Jan Segers about Article 23 of the Constitution (freedom of education). The presentation was in the hands of author Naema Tahir, wife of Professor Kinneging. The location was a school in The Hague, the press was widely present. Discussions were held about government control over schools, the position of religion in society and civic education. Soumaya Sahla was of course present all evening, accompanied by Frits Bolkestein and his wife.
Within the network, the rule of law to which Hermans contributed on Sunday predominates WNL referenced; this is the civilized Netherlands in which every person gets a second chance. People who have been deradicalized are valuable to a society. Or, as Bolkestein described the importance of his friendship with Soumaya: ‘Our contact gave me a window on the Moroccan Muslim community in The Hague.’
It was also this network that gave the VVD program committee a slap on the wrist in December 2020. The draft election program referred to judges who ‘immediately and extensively intervene in democratically taken decisions’. Member States should be able to correct judgments of the European Court of Human Rights if they ‘go against their intention’. The lyrics were reversed after considerable discussion.
Last October, Bolkestein recorded a film for Fonda Sahla, another sister, who joined the House of Representatives for D66 in the interim. Unlike Soumaya, Fonda does wear a headscarf. ‘I’m sure you’ll do very well,’ says a frail Bolkestein on the screen. And with a joke: ‘Unfortunately for the wrong party.’
Written questions
On December 5, Wilders puts written questions to Prime Minister Mark Rutte. He wants to know if it was known that Fonda is ‘possibly’ the sister of ‘a convicted Islamic terrorist’. And if so, why he was not informed about it. After all, he was one of the goals of the Hofstad group at the time, just like Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
If he does not like the answers (Rutte: ‘It is not up to the cabinet to make statements about the personal circumstances of MPs’), he requests a parliamentary debate. He won’t get a majority for that. ‘That is uncollegial and antisocial’, responds Wilders. “They don’t care about my safety.” He saves his dissatisfaction until the debate about the government statement last week, the first opportunity for a confrontation with Rutte.
In a tweet on December 7, Kinneging makes another call to leave Soumaya Sahla alone. ‘I know her well: a top woman. (…) The past is behind her. Getting old cows out of the ditch for political gain is dishonorable.’
Things are different. In the debate, Wilders refers emphatically to the final legal judgment of the Supreme Court in 2016. Although Soumaya has taken a different direction from the ideas she embraced at the time, at the same time she has ‘chosen to persist in a denial of the obvious meaning of the contents of telephone conversations she had made (Sahla’s telephone was tapped, she inquired from a sister who worked in a pharmacy in The Hague about addresses of politicians, red.), and of the inescapable finding that firearms were circulating in her environment, she knew.’ She accused the prosecutors of ‘scoring drive’. ‘There is no question of really distancing itself from the criminal offenses she has committed.’
On Wednesday, the House of Representatives will debate terrorism for the first time with the new VVD Minister of Justice and Security, Dilan Yesilgöz-Zegerius. As a Member of Parliament, he had firm views on terrorists and, for example, not returning travelers to Syria and their children. “My priority is to make sure those guys don’t come back,” Yesilgöz told two years ago de Volkskrant.
In December she was EW – still as State Secretary for Economic Affairs – was asked about Soumaya Sahla. ‘She was in court and was serving her sentence. I notice it. Point.’ That dot, the same one that Hermans initially put, has now become a semicolon at the VVD.
From the judgment of the Court of Appeal, ratified by the Supreme Court in 2016:
According to the foregoing, the suspect was guilty of participating in a criminal group at the time. This criminal organization focused on exceptional, namely terrorist offences. The suspect actively propagated the extremist ideas of the people who were part of the organisation, showed a close connection with those people and, furthermore, had firearms available for this purpose.
‘The uncontrolled possession of firearms creates unacceptable security risks and feelings of insecurity in society and thus constitutes a serious offense. In addition, the crimes targeted by the organization pose a serious threat to public order and can lead to social disruption by fomenting unrest and instilling fear. By participating in the said organization, the accused has violated the fundamental right of people to live in freedom and peace with each other. The court considers this a very serious offense against society, for which an unconditional prison sentence is the only appropriate sanction.’