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ROTTERDAM, Netherlands -- Arriving in this major port on the Rhine River where the Dutch hold their terrorism trials, trains pass by a building not commonly associated with the land of windmills and marijuana cafes - a blue-domed mosque with soaring twin minarets.

Ali Unal, one of the leaders of the Turkish Mevlana mosque, wants one thing to be clear about the radical Muslim Dutch teenager accused of plotting to blow up the nation's parliament.

"He is not my Muslim brother," said Unal. In the courtyard, he showed off a sculpture, called "Unity," representing cooperation between Dutch Muslims and the state.

The Mevlana mosque is Rotterdam's newest, but a larger one is under construction - a reminder of the city's growing Muslim population.

Nearly 1 million Muslims live in the country of 16 million, primarily Turkish and Moroccan immigrants and their children. Most have tried to assimilate, and if the men in sportscoats or track suits and women in jeans with their hair uncovered do stand out on the Rotterdam streets, it is only because of their darker complexions.

But several terrorism trials, and the gruesome slaughter of controversial filmmaker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam in November, have Dutch suddenly doubting their much-vaunted cultural tolerance.

After van Gogh was shot riding his bicycle and his head was nearly sawn off, his killer used another knife to stick a five-page jihadist manifesto onto the victim's chest.

"I know definitely that you, O America, will go down. I know definitely that you, O Europe, will go down. I know definitely that you, O Netherlands, will do down," it read in parts.

Arsonists attacked mosques and Muslim schools after the murder. Two parliamentary critics of immigration went into hiding, accompanied by armed guards. Police quickly rounded up alleged terror cell members suspected of plotting attacks in the Netherlands, leading to a gunfight in The Hague where suspects threw hand grenades at police.

The spotlight then turned to the trial of Samir Azzouz, 18, the Dutch-born son of Moroccan immigrants.

When police arrested Azzouz last June for a suspected role in a supermarket robbery and searched his apartment, they found apparent bomb-making materials, ammo clips and a silencer for an automatic rifle, night vision goggles, a bullet-proof vest, jihadist literature and videos and maps of the Dutch parliament, intelligence headquarters, the defense ministry, a nuclear power plant and the country's main airport, along with notes on security there.

The trial opened in March in Rotterdam's starkly modern courtroom, where the only visible nods to tradition were a bust of Queen Beatrix, the black robes and white cravats of the judges, and the crocheted "kufi" prayer cap of the defendant.

During the trial, prosecutors played a wiretap of a phone call Azzouz allegedly made to a terrorist suspect injured in the shootout at The Hague, telling him, "They found the plans. I almost had a heart attack."

The evidence wasn't good enough. The judges acquitted Azzouz of terrorism charges, saying the prosecution proved only that he was interested in religious extremism, not that he planned a specific crime. Upon his release, Azzouz beat up a news photographer and was arrested for assault.

Had the judges ruled differently, Azzouz would have served less than five years in prison. Prosecuters did not seek the maximum 12-year sentence, arguing the accused was young, had no prior convictions and his alleged plans were not concretely detailed.

Yet Dutch prosecutor Bart Nieuwenhuizen boasted the day Azzouz was indicted that the requested seven-year sentence - which automatic parole would have cut by one-third - demonstrated that other would-be terrorists should think twice.

"It's a signal to all the people born and raised in our country that we will act on this kind of conspiracy," Nieuwenhuizen said.

It did not impress John Molkenboer, 51, a cab driver who said he feels "like an American Indian" as "one of the few native Dutch left in Rotterdam."

The sentence prosectuers sought was "much too light, as (are) all the sentences in Holland," Molkenboer said.

The Netherlands passed a new terrorism law last year that includes a sentence of up to 20 years for heading a terrorist organization.

But some like Molkenboer wonder what good new laws are if courts are unwilling to convict. Azzouz's case was the third major Dutch terrorism trial in recent years, and all three have ended in acquittals.

Azzouz's record was not exactly clean. In 2002, police in Ukraine caught him and a friend trying to get to Chechnya, a jihadist battleground, and sent them back to the Netherlands. Authorities put him under surveillance, and Azzouz was arrested the next year on suspicion of a bomb plot when police found him with electronic timers and fertilizer. But the suspect was released for insufficient eveidence, because the fertilizer was not a type that could be rendered into an explosive.

Vincent van Steen, spokesman for Dutch intelligence, said about 150 people in the Netherlands are under surveillance for suspected links to extremist groups.

But surveillance can't always be watching.

Sitting in the agency's nondescript headquarters in suburbs of The Hague, where security caught Azzouz casing the building last year, van Steen conceded that another one of the people his agency was following was Theo van Gogh's alleged killer, Mohammed Bouyeri.

"We knew he was a radical Muslim, but we didn't think he was dangerous," van Steen said.

The government approved a large budget increase this year for intelligence service, which plans to add another 350 staff to the current roster of 1,000 by 2009.

Staff increases are not without drawbacks. Last fall a newly hired Arabic translator at the agency, Outman ben Amar, was arrested and charged with mailing terrorism suspects copies of their wiretapped conversations.

Pretrial proceedings in that case are under way, as they are with Bouyeri.

A dozen suspects of the so-called Hofstad group, an alleged terrorist network which prosecutors say was linked to Bouyeri and Azzouz, are set to go to trial later this year.

"I think the tables are turning. Maybe we have been a bit naive, but we're not naive anymore," van Steen Said.

Two weeks later, Azzouz was acquitted.

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