In the Netherlands, crime reporter Peter R. de Vries is gunned down in the street. People are shocked – and suddenly safety is an issue again
The man was always unimpressed. A friend of Peter R. de Vries asked when he was last afraid. “Honestly? When I came home with my school report, ”was the succinct answer.
Fear is not the business of Peter R. de Vries, 64, the most famous crime reporter in the Netherlands. Although it doesn’t quite hit the journalist. De Vries is a TV investigator. He personally tracked down the people behind the kidnapping of the brewery king Freddy Heineken in South America, and the conviction of the murderer of the US college student Natalee Holloway even earned him an “Emmy”.
De Vries messed with everyone. That made him the last fighter for law and order for many in the Netherlands. For others, the private investigator was simply a nuisance. De Vries was gunned down in the street in Amsterdam on Tuesday evening. Five bullets hit him, at least one in the head. De Vries is fighting for his life.
Three suspects were arrested immediately after the crime. But the attack is about more than a criminal case. During his state visit to Berlin, the Dutch King Willem-Alexander spoke of an “attack on the rule of law”, Prime Minister Mark Rutte saw an “attack on the free press” and Amsterdam’s Mayor Femke Halsema called the act a “brutal, cowardly crime”.
The police reported three arrests that night. These are a 21-year-old Dutch citizen from Rotterdam and a 35-year-old EU citizen from Poland. According to the police, one of the two is said to have fired the shots at de Vries. An 18-year-old Dutchman from Amsterdam has since been released.
Revenge of a convicted person?
reaction of the DJV
According to the German Association of Journalists (DJV), the assassination attempt on Peter R. de Vries shows: It is life-threatening to report on organized crime. DJV boss Frank Überall said on Wednesday: “It is all the more important that journalists who focus on ‘organized crime’ are comprehensively protected.” According to Überall, “critical and courageous journalism should be silenced with the attack”. In his opinion, this was the “targeted attempt” to “intimidate journalists who report on organized crime.” Dpa
Also on Wednesday night there were house searches in Rotterdam and Tiel and Maurik, two cities in the province of Gelderland. Weapons and ammunition were seized. The trail to Maurik, where the 35-year-old suspect also lives, points to connections to the Marengo trial. Ridouan T., the main suspect in the proceedings, has maintained several friendships there from his youth.
De Vries had made few friends with his work. In his early thirties he gave up his job as a police reporter for the tabloid “De Telegraaf”, first made a name for himself with a crime magazine, and later started his own crime show on television: “Peter R. de Vries, misdaadsverslaggever” – Peter R. . de Vries, police reporter. The program had similarities with the German-language TV format “Aktenzeichen xy unsolved”. Police officers investigate Eduard Zimmermann and Rudy Cerne on behalf of the state, but de Vries went on the trail himself on the private broadcaster SBS6. Sometimes with dubious means. He clarified the disappearance of US student Natalee Holloway on the Dutch Antilles island of Aruba in 2008 with an undercover agent. He first gave the suspect a joint to relax and then coaxed a confession from him – all recorded on tape. Seven million viewers liked to see it on Dutch television, followed by a tour of US shows. Vries got the headlines. And an Emmy.
Popular fighter among the people
De Vries acted where the state apparently only watched. That was well received in a country whose judiciary is seen by many to be too compliant. The principle of opportunity is the legal formula according to which Dutch investigators can stop minor offenses even without a trial. The judiciary is supposed to relieve the burden, which causes great resentment among the victims of minor offenses. Isn’t the first task of the modern state already in the writings of Thomas Hobbes security? In the Netherlands this led to a heated debate at the beginning of the century. The right-wing populist Pim Fortuyn discovered the issue of internal security and de Vries also flirted with politics at the time. But he never really got involved.
The list of his successes was too long anyway. De Vries published his research on the Heineken kidnapping in 1987 in a book that Hollywood filmed. He tracked down Heineken kidnapper Frans Meijer in Paraguay in 1994. He later became friends with his accomplice Cor van Hout. After his violent death in 2003, de Vries published an obituary notice, “Crime brought us together, crime separated us”. Not everyone was enthusiastic about it.
De Vries delved deep into the secrets of the Amsterdam underworld. To the chagrin of the royal family too. In 2003, de Vries brought to light the connection between the future prince-wife Mabel Wisse Smit and a criminal well-known in the city. The palace was not happy, but they got married anyway.
De Vries gave up his show nine years ago, but he stayed on the hunt for criminals. Most recently, he dealt with the Marengo trial, a mammoth trial against more than ten suspects in an Amsterdam drug cartel. De Vries had contact with the key witness of the proceedings. At the latest after his lawyer was executed two years ago, de Vries was also considered endangered.
“He is a national hero,” said Amsterdam Mayor Halsema after the attack. De Vries continues to fight for his life in the hospital. The debate on internal security in the Netherlands has only just begun.
