Train hijackers ordered executed by Justice minister

On the eve of the storming of a passenger train at De Punt in 1977, former Minister of Justice Dries van Agt said that the hijackers must not leave the train alive. This is according to a statement from a former policeman. The policeman, who was stationed near the train hijacking, received a call from his father, the then head of the monitoring station in the district of Utrecht, on the day before the storming of the train. "I hear him say: there was a message received that something is about to happen. Especially the leader of the hijacking and the girl, from the minister, must under any circumstances not be allowed to leave the train alive." The "girl" refers to Hansina Uktolseja, the only female hijacker. Eight people were dead at the end of the second Moluccas train hijacking in the Netherlands. Six of the nine hijackers and two hostages. Afterwards Van Agt declared that there was no other possibility and that the Moluccas were not shot deliberately. It is clear that he wanted to intervene harder than Prime Minster Den Uyl, who called the action an execution. The marines who were in the carriages to overpower the hijackers, earlier said in a cryptic manner that they had fired fatal shots. However the official story is still that the hijackers and the two hostages were killed by snipers from a distance at the start of the assault. According to EenVandaag, Kees Kommer, the commander of the gunmen, feels betrayed. He only knew of one instruction: eliminate the hijackers. Apparently the marines received an additional order to kill the Moluccas: "only afterwards I realized that some of the marines went in with officially forbidden and extremely damaging hollow point ammunition." Kommer says that he would never have performed a command to execute. For the first time in 37 years there is an official investigation into the attack on the train in Drenthe. That investigation is almost complete.