The shots fall in the middle of Amsterdam between bars and cafes. The reporter Peter R. de Vries is critically injured. The country is in shock. The tracks clearly point in one direction.
Amsterdam – Flowers lie on the idyllic street in the middle of Amsterdam, between bars, pubs and terraces. Candles are burning, sad people have placed letters on the stones: “Hold on, Peter” or “Fight, Peter”.
Passers-by stop briefly and look at the spot. “We must not allow our beautiful Amsterdam to get caught in the stranglehold of criminals,” said a woman on Wednesday. “I’m horrified.” She gets off her bike and puts a bouquet of flowers on the street. “I really admire de Vries,” says one man.
Attack on journalism
They are scenes from the scene of a crime that deeply horrifies and shocked the Netherlands. The internationally known crime reporter Peter R. de Vries (64) was shot down at this point on Tuesday evening and was critically injured. He was still struggling with death on Wednesday. For many Dutch people, de Vries is a symbol of the fight against crime.
There are reactions from home and abroad, marked by shock, anger and compassion. On the sidelines of his state visit to Berlin, King Willem-Alexander expressed his horror at what he said was an attack on the rule of law. Prime Minister Mark Rutte speaks of an “attack on free journalism”. All 17 million Dutch people now feel with their families, according to Rutte in parliament.
The German government also condemns the act. It was a “devious attack”, said the deputy government spokeswoman Martina Fietz on Wednesday in Berlin. The federal government wishes the reporter a speedy recovery. If it should be confirmed that the reporter was attacked because of his journalistic activities, this was “a clear attack on the freedom of the press”.
Two suspects have been caught
The day after the crime at the Leidseplein, there were increasing indications that organized crime was behind it. Two men who were arrested a few hours after the crime are urgently suspected: a 35-year-old Pole who lives in Maurik in the south-east of the country, and a 21-year-old Rotterdam native. Both are to be brought before the judge on Friday.
Computers and ammunition were seized during house searches – the police did not provide any more details. But there are many indications that the attack is directly related to the reporter’s most recent case.
He is the confidante of Nabil B., the key witness in the so-called Marengo trial against a drug gang. It is about several contract killings. The innocent brother of the key witness had already been killed, and in 2019 Nabil B.’s lawyer was also shot on his doorstep.
The act is reminiscent of the script of a thriller and does not seem to fit the idyllic canal city at all. At around 7.30 p.m., de Vries left a TV studio and made his way to his car. Then a man approaches him, as you can see on video recordings – slim, not very tall, he is wearing a kind of military jacket with a camouflage motif. Several shots were fired – four or five, eyewitnesses say. De Vries falls to the ground, his head is bleeding profusely. A woman runs to him, holds his hand until the police and ambulance arrive.
The perpetrator runs away – at a jogging pace, as witnesses testify. A few streets away, he gets into a silver-colored car that had apparently been waiting for him. The police are in pursuit. About 60 kilometers further, at Leidschendam just before The Hague, she stops the getaway car and arrests the two suspects. A third man, who is also arrested, has nothing to do with the case and is released, the police say.
Respected reporter
The attack is not unexpected. Peter R. de Vries knew himself that he was the target of organized crime. He had been warned by the security authorities last autumn. “Yesterday the worst nightmare became a reality,” writes Royce de Vries, the reporter’s son, on Twitter on Wednesday. He does not report any news about his father’s condition. “Much is still uncertain.”
For victims and loved ones, the reporter, who had a well-watched TV show for years, is the last straw to get justice or certainty. Like a pittbull, he bites into cases, only loosening up when they are loosened.
With 44 TV programs, he ensured the resumption of a notorious murder case – and in the end the acquittal of two innocent men. De Vries was the driving force behind the hunt for the alleged killer of 11-year-old boy Nicky Verstappen, arrested in 2018.
De Vries caused an international sensation in 1987 with his bestseller about the kidnapping of the brewer Freddy Heineken. And then with his reports on the case of Nathalee Halloway. The young American disappeared in 2005 on the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba and was probably killed by a Dutchman. De Vries won an international Emmy for his reportages in 2008. Most recently he had testified as an important witness against the serious criminal Willem-Holleeder, one of the Heineken kidnappers.
Fearless fighter against crime
Lawyers and journalists are often critical of de Vries – because of his methods and friendly contacts with informants from the underworld. Some consider him arrogant or call him a know-it-all. He mixed his roles: sometimes he appeared as a spokesman for victims’ families, then again as an objective journalist, and now as a confidante of the key witness – in the service of his defense lawyer.
In this role he came under the crosshairs of the main defendant in the Marengo trial, Ridouan Taghi. De Vries himself said that he was on Taghi’s “death list”. “It’s clear,” says Telegraaf’s court reporter, Saskia Belleman. “You want to silence Peter.”
For many Dutch people – citizens, politicians, right up to the royal couple – the reporter is a fearless fighter against crime. Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema also emphasized this on Wednesday. She condemns the “cowardly and brutal attack”.
EU Council President Charles Michel describes the attack as an “attack on our core values”. The organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls for “immediate, complete clarification”. The German Association of Journalists (DJV) warns: “It is to be feared that the billionaire drug and arms business will not only strike mercilessly in the Netherlands if it feels disturbed by journalistic research.”
De Vries had refused personal protection. “That is part of the occupational risk,” he said in a recent interview. He wants to live free and not let fear dominate him. And he won’t let up. Prime Minister Rutte has now confirmed this in Parliament. The fight against crime will take a long time – “but the Netherlands will win it in the end”. dpa
