Filmmaker and columnist Theo van Gogh (47) murdered on Linnaeusstraat

On the morning of Tuesday 2 November 2004 the 47-year-old filmmaker and columnist Theo van Gogh was cycling along Linnaeusstraat in Amsterdam-Oost when a man on a bicycle opened fire on him. Wounded, he reached the other side of the street, but his attacker chased him, still shooting, and bystanders were hit as well. When Van Gogh was lying on the ground, the man cut his throat and fixed a letter to his body with a knife, addressed to the VVD MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali, with whom Van Gogh had made the film Submission. The killer, 26-year-old Amsterdammer Mohammed Bouyeri, fled but was shot in the leg by police not far from Linnaeusstraat and arrested. He turned out to belong to the radical Islamist Hofstad network. On 26 July 2005 the Amsterdam court sentenced him to life: Bouyeri said he had acted out of religious conviction, and the court held that the murder - in a busy street, in the rush hour, of a well-known Dutchman, with a threatening letter addressed to the whole country - had been committed with terrorist intent. The murder caused great unrest in Dutch society.