Friday, January 21, 2005

Bag thief death fans Dutch racial tensions - Yahoo! UK & Ireland News

Bag thief death fans Dutch racial tensions - Yahoo! UK & Ireland News

Bag thief death fans Dutch racial tensions

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The death of a man with Moroccan roots who was run over by a woman after he stole her bag has inflamed Dutch racial tensions that have smouldered since the murder of a filmmaker critical of Islam.

Several hundred people, including many Moroccans, marched on Friday from the site in an immigrant neighbourhood in Amsterdam where the 19-year-old died on Monday. The woman whose bag he stole drove her car into his moped, crushing him against a tree.

The friends and family of the youth, named by the media as Ali El Bejjati, say his death was a racially motivated murder. Two months ago, filmmaker Theo van Gogh was killed in the same district, allegedly by a 26-year-old Dutch-Moroccan.

The story has been front-page news all week in the Netherlands, home to about one million Muslims, more than a quarter of Moroccan descent. De Telegraaf daily said on Friday it was the man's own fault.

Geert Wilders, an anti-immigration politician whose popularity has soared since Van Gogh was murdered, called for the government to strip criminals with dual citizenship of their Dutch nationality.

'Arresting the woman makes the victim the criminal and the criminal a victim. It's turning the world on its head,' he said.

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