Terrorists’ target was air base, one paper asserts, while the others doubt there will be any convictions. Fighting cyber crime has to change; young Christians meet in Rotterdam, and there are more than enough oily balls for New Year.

Terrorist target was air base
While most of the other papers relegate the fate of the 12 Somali men who were arrested on terrorism charges on Friday to the inside pages, the country’s best-selling broadsheet trumpets a scoop on its front page. “Somalis target Apaches”, screams De Telegraaf’s headline.

The Dutch AIVD intelligence and security service, it says, had “extremely concrete” information that some of the Somali men were planning to attack the Gilze-Rijen airbase. Their aim apparently was to shoot down one of the Dutch air force Apache helicopters stationed there.

The mass-circulation daily says a rocket launcher was probably going to be delivered from a European country, such as Denmark or Belgium, for the purpose. “Put crudely, the only thing that wasn’t there yet, was the device needed to bring one down,” a ‘reliable intelligence source’ tells De Telegraaf. “Action had to be taken, whatever the consequences.”

We’re told that 85 helicopters, including those used by Dutch troops in Afghanistan over the past six years, are based at Gilze-Rijen. Shooting down an Apache helicopter would have enormous symbolic value to the Jihadist movement, the paper believes.

'Us, terrorists?'
The only paper besides De Telegraaf to reserve a front-page slot for the Somali detainees is today’s AD. The tabloid’s very brief story about the men freed by the authorities, however, is quite different. “Us, terrorists? There is absolutely no evidence” reads the headline.

On an inside page, de Volkskrant goes into more detail, saying yet another of the 12 Somalis originally picked up has been released, bringing the tally to six freed so far. The questions asked by his police interrogators were “really stupid”, says one of the released men. “I kept telling them that I’d come to Rotterdam to drink and smoke dope. Have you ever seen terrorists do that?”

De Volkskrant says the authorities consider preventing attacks more important than running the risk of arresting innocent people. A lawyer tells the centre-left daily why this approach leads to terrorist suspects seldom being convicted.

“Arrests are often based on vague information from the AIVD security service which can’t be checked. I understand why the police take action quickly when there may be a concrete threat to a specific location. But in practice, the threshold is far too low.”

The lawyer finds it worrying that far-reaching investigative powers are made use of without a crime ever having been committed. “You’re then talking about a police state,” he warns.

Fight against cybercrime ‘must change’
“Photographer looking for young teenagers for underwear shots” was the advert on a modelling website. It looked innocent enough, says nrc.next, but further investigation revealed that, elsewhere on the web, the same man claimed to be an amateur wanting to take hardcore shots; he was also active on sex chat sites. Put all that together, says the paper, and you have a possible child pornography producer.

A government-commissioned report says the police should trawl the internet more thoroughly to find those behind child pornography. At present, investigators concentrate too much on people downloading images. This results in the small fry being caught while the major players behind child pornography escape detection.

De Volkskrant deals with another area covered by the report, that of internet fraud. It says international co-operation between national police forces is the only way to combat such crime which includes ‘phishing’- illegally gaining users’ personal details. Internet providers, money transfer offices and others in the sector should have to hand over information about users to the authorities.

The report warns that these new methods of investigation may come close to contravening present privacy legislation. It says information will have to be gathered in such a way as “not to damage people’s privacy”.

International meeting for young Christians
Protestant daily Trouw reminds us that the Taizé Youth Meeting kicks off in the huge Ahoy conference centre in Rotterdam today. Over 25,000 young Christians of various denominations from throughout Europe are expected to attend the religious event, one of Europe’s biggest, which runs till Saturday.

Taizé gets its name from the ecumenical monastery in France, but Trouw does not mention that the meeting is a Christian one. It does say that the hall where the young people will be meeting each other is hung with banners proclaiming the words: ‘compassion’, ‘forgiveness’ and ‘joy’. Nearly 10,000 families from parishes around Rotterdam are putting the young people up for the duration of the event.

Coveted prize announced
This morning’s AD reserves pride of place on its front page for a photograph showing three smiling men, glasses of champagne in hand, behind a huge pile of delicious looking oily balls (oliebollen). The Dutch delicacies – like doughnuts without the holes – are traditionally eaten at New Year. These examples have raisons in the dough and are liberally sprinkled with powdered sugar.

Voskamp bakery in Spijkernisse, a town just south of Rotterdam has won the tabloid’s title for Best Oily Balls 2010. “We’ve won the best prize a baker’s can win. We’ve put the recipe in the safe,” one of the master bakers tells the paper. The shop has had to buy a machine to measure out the dough to keep up with demand. They can now produce 10,000 oily balls every hour. That should be enough.