Police investigate IS link to Dutch holiday village popular with Arabs

Dutch police are looking into a report that a possible IS sympathiser has visited a holiday park in the Limburg town of Vaals, just over the border from Aachen in Germany.

The Landal Greenparks holiday park in Hoog Vaals has been popular with Arabic guests escaping the heat for several years.

The founder of website Bellingcat appealed for information about the location on Twitter on Tuesday night and said site had been identified within one hour of the appeal going out.

Dutch police now say they are trying to establish ‘if, when and why’ the ‘possible IS sympathiser’ was at the holiday park. No physical search for the man is underway, news agency ANP reported.

Bellingcat said on Facebook on Wednesday afternoon the photographs had been uploaded several months ago and there are no indications the uploader had been near the location recently.

Three years ago the holiday park hit the headlines when the Volkskrant reported hundreds of ‘rich Arabs’ had spend part of August at the park to avoid the heat in Saudi Arabia and Dubai.

Arabic guests in traditional clothing had been coming to the park for some 15 years, the paper said.

According to quotes from guests on the company website, the park was also very popular with Arabic guests this year.

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