Saleh Ali was one of 64,000 Syrian refugees living in the Netherlands. The vast majority, like Ali, are young men. And the largest number of these migrants spend their days idling in Amsterdam.
On Thursday morning, Saleh Ali took a walk to trendy Amstelveenseweg while wearing a keffiyah and waving a terrorist PLO flag. He stopped in front of a Jewish restaurant, shouted “Allahu Akbar” and began smashing the windows. The Amsterdam police stood by and watched quizzically until he was done. Then when he entered the restaurant, they finally called him out and arrested him.
And in two days he was back on the street.
Amsterdam is a very tolerant place. Not just of drugs or prostitution, but of Islamic violence.
Saleh Ali had lied about his past to get his temporary residence permit while claiming to be a refugee. He had combat training and had fought with Jihadists in and out of Syria. He told the police that he had been prepared to die in the attack on the restaurant and that he will continue engaging in violence.
But this information was kept secret until an anonymous source in the police department leaked it. The lawyer for HaCarmel, the restaurant that had been assaulted by the Islamic terrorist, issued a statement expressing outrage that the attacker who had pledged to commit more attacks was back on the street.
“It is incomprehensible and shocking that this man with a terrorist background, who claims to be prepared to commit violence, has been released,” wrote Herman Loonstein, a lawyer and Jewish civil rights activist. He warned that the attacker poses “a serious danger to society.”
And the prosecutor’s office took immediate action by filing a complaint against the restaurant’s lawyer. The Chief Officer of the Public Prosecution Service objected that, “sharing of information from the police interrogation report is ’inappropriate’”. It’s inappropriate because it revealed that Saleh Ali should never have been in the Netherlands and that the authorities had stood around watching while a trained terrorist attacked a Jewish restaurant and then let him go even after he vowed to launch further attacks.
While the prosecutors went after the restaurant for exposing the terrorist past of the attacker, the attacker was headed back to court for an appearance before a three judge panel.
Saleh Ali wore camouflage to court. According to Matthys van Raalten, a conservative commentator, he told the court that, “he feels like a volcano that is waiting to erupt”. He had already informed an officer that “the attack on the kosher restaurant was only the “first step” and that a next step would come.
He refused to discuss what the next step would be.
So of course they let him go a second time.
