THE self-confessed killer of Theo van Gogh faced his victim’s mother in an Amsterdam courtroom yesterday and told her that he felt no remorse for his crime.

Turning his chair towards Anneke van Gogh as she watched from the public gallery, Mohammed Bouyeri said: “I don’t feel your pain. I don’t have any sympathy for you. I can’t feel for you because I think you’re a non-believer.”

The Islamic radical admitted killing Mr van Gogh, a Dutch film-maker, saying that he had been driven by his religious beliefs and would do the same again.

Bouyeri, the son of Moroccan immigrants to the Netherlands, is accused of shooting and stabbing Mr van Gogh to death in broad daylight on a street in Amsterdam last November, before nearly decapitating him and impaling his corpse with a knife, which secured a five-page note declaring a holy war.

Despite insisting on his right to silence when the trial opened on Monday, Bouyeri spoke out publicly for the first time about the murder, which provoked a wave of ethnic and religious violence across the once-tolerant country.

Clutching the Koran and wearing a flowing robe and chequered headscarf, Bouyeri praised Allah and the Prophet Muhammad before admitting the killing. In a chilling insight into his mindset, he told the panel of judges: “I did what I did purely out of my beliefs. I want you to know that I acted out of conviction and not that I took his life because he was Dutch or because I was Moroccan and felt insulted.”

Seven months before his murder Mr van Gogh had produced a film about domestic violence in Islam that had offended many Muslims. Bouyeri insisted: “If I ever get free, I would do it again.”

He was caught by police in a gun battle after he fled the scene of the crime spattered in Mr van Gogh’s blood. A note was found in his pocket saying that he wanted to become a martyr.

Speaking in Dutch with a Moroccan accent, he turned to police in the court and said: “I shot to kill and be killed. You cannot understand.”

Some spectators rose to their feet, visibly stunned by his comments. The confession and lack of remorse highlight the worst fears haunting mainstream Dutch society about the seemingly unbridgeable gap between them and some of the alienated Muslim youths growing up in the country. The well-educated Bouyeri, 27, had been a moderate Muslim who was considered reasonably well integrated before becoming radicalised nearly two years ago.

The prosecutors say that he had become dedicated to conducting a holy war against the enemies of Islam and had murdered Mr van Gogh to spread terror in the Netherlands. They claim that he is part of a network of Islamic extremists with international links called the Hofstad group, many of whose members are awaiting trail on terrorism charges in Rotterdam.

Frits van Straelen, the chief prosecutor, told the court: “The accused preaches a message of hate and violence. He preaches that anyone who thinks differently can be killed.”

The verdict is expected on July 26. Bouyeri faces life imprisonment without parole.

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