THE HAGUE, Netherlands (JTA) – Dutch police officers in 2004 may have foiled a terrorist attack on Israel’s embassy in the Netherlands, according to leaked documents.
The suspected perpetrators, Jamal M. and Bandar A. from Somalia and Saudi Arabia respectively, were detained by two Royal Netherlands police officers who noticed the men filming Israel’s embassy in The Hague from a parked car, according to the report Thursday by the Algemeen Dagblad daily.
The paper said its report was based on leaked diplomatic cables from the U.S. embassy in the city.
The two suspects had a third partner, according to the report. Their camera contained footage of additional embassies and of a synagogue in the Netherlands. All the suspects were Netherlands residents in 2004.
The report said the two men were unknown to Dutch police. The newspaper’s report did not say whether the men were prosecuted or otherwise processed by Dutch or other authorities.
Two weeks after the arrest, police and the Dutch domestic intelligence service received a tip from an Amsterdam resident of Moroccan descent who said a young man had approached him with a request to buy a bomb and weapons for an attack on “a place where Jews and Americans work.”
It is not known whether the tip was directly related to the activity of the three suspects.
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