In 2005 Samir A. was sentenced to nine years for planning a terrorist attack. He will be out in 2013. The Volkskrant interviewed his wife Abida.

‘In 2013 all this will come to an end and we’ll be able to begin again’. Abida knows better now, the paper writes. There is no future for her family, not in the Netherlands and not in Morocco. ‘Where we go will depend on the relationship the AIVD has with that country’s secret services. There is no way of finding out. There’s always a risk they will persecute us. Or worse, that Samir with the stigma of being a terrorist will end up in a secret Moroccan jail and be tortured there. It happens all the time.’
Good Muslims
Abida is adamant that her husband ‘has no blood on his hands’. Even if the accusations were true – and she denies that they are – Samir has done nothing concrete. All he did was travel to Chechnya when he was sixteen. Samir is in prison for his deas, she feels. Abida who says that until 9/11 she was ‘ignorant and naïve’, claims that far from being radical they are good Muslims who do not want to stand idly by while their Muslim brothers and sisters are being oppressed.
9/11 was her wake up call, she says. ‘There must be a reason why people sacrifice their lives’, she thought. Not long after that she travelled to Gaza and started working for Al Aqsa, a humanitarian fund suspected by the government of being a foil for Hamas. In 2002 she married Samir, six years her junior but much more politically aware.
Hypocricy
According Abida, Samir thought he would be able to speak his mind in a democratic country.
In court he declared: ‘We rejects your system, we hate you’. Now Abida thinks he was stupid to say it. ‘We don’t hate people. We think they are being fooled, like us. Only they don’t know it.’
After 9/11 planning a terrorist attack became a criminal offense. Abida still thinks Samir is being punished for what he stood for. She accuses the government of hypocrisy. ‘Look at those Dutch Libians. They are doing exactly the same as Samir when he wanted to go to Chechnya’.
When Samir comes out, Abida wants to live in peace. ‘Others will have to take over. Many Muslims are beginning to understand how things are. It’s their turn now.’