THE suspect in the brutal murder of the Dutch polemicist and film-maker Theo van Gogh is linked to a network of Islamic extremists, authorities said yesterday.

Mr Van Gogh, 47, a great-grand-nephew of the painter Vincent van Gogh, was shot more than half a dozen times on Tuesday morning in an Amsterdam street, allegedly by a bearded man in traditional Islamic clothing.

Dutch newspapers reported that the assailant then cut the film-maker’s throat with a butcher’s knife before pinning a page of quotations in Arabic from the Koran to his body by plunging a second knife into his chest. Police arrested a 26-year-old with dual Dutch and Moroccan citizenship after a shootout in a park near by. Eight suspected Islamic radicals were arrested later.

Mr Van Gogh was a controversial figure in the Netherlands and Belgium, who had angered the Muslim community by making a film critical of Islam and portraying an abused woman with script from the Koran painted on her skin.

As 20,000 demonstrators denounced the killing in Amsterdam on Tuesday night, government ministers held emergency talks and met Islamic leaders to try to calm tensions that had been growing since the murder two years ago of Pym Fortuyn, the anti-immigration populist.

Mat Herben, a Fortuyn supporter, said that Mr Van Gogh’s death had shown that the country was embroiled in a clash of cultures. “Society is threatened by extremists who reject our culture. They are the fifth column and Theo saw that more than anybody,” he said.

Fortuyn’s party came second in a general election days after he was killed by an animal rights activist. It has since been torn apart by infighting but the political mainstream has adopted Fortuyn’s ideas with the centre-right Government cracking down on failed asylum-seekers and demanding that immigrants do more to integrate.

In a letter to parliament, Jan Hein Donner, the Justice Minister, and Johan Remkes, the Interior Minister, said that the suspect had come to the attention of the Dutch national security service, but was not among 150 suspected Islamic extremists being monitored.

“In the light of what is known so far, we should seriously consider the fact that the perpetrator acted from a radical Islamic conviction,” the ministers said.

Dutch media also reported that the suspect is a friend of Samir Azzouz, an 18-year-old Muslim of Moroccan origin awaiting trial on charges of planning a terrorist attack on targets, including a nuclear reactor and Schiphol airport.

The Dutch media reacted angrily to the murder, the Telegraaf newspaper using the headline “Butchered” over a large colour photograph of Mr Van Gogh’s body. It blamed lenient immigration policies for turning an open society into a “resentful and intolerant” one.

“We’re not going to take this” said the Algemeen Dagblad daily, As well as being an award-winning film-maker and hosting a television chat show, Mr Van Gogh had appeared in the Dutch version of Big Brother, and had been a columnist for most of the leading Dutch newspapers.

He thrived on controversy and attracted complaints from Christian and Jewish groups, as well as Muslims.

Well-wishers laid flowers yesterday at the place where he died, as well as beer, cigarettes and cactus plants — a reference to his prickly nature and his habit of giving guests on his talk show a cactus as a gift.

Dutch Muslim groups expressed fear of reprisals, and the Government appealed for people not to scapegoat innocent Muslims.

“Our reaction to this deed should not be that we condemn groups of people because of this brutal murder,” it said.

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