Decorated soldier to be prosecuted for headbutting cop at Den Bosch carnival

By Janene Pieters on April 12, 2019 - 15:10
Gavel
GavelBrian TurnerFlickrCC-BY

Decorated soldier Marko Kroon will be prosecuted for assaulting a cop in Den Bosch during Carnival early in March. He will be prosecuted for "breach of honor, insult and simple assault", the Public Prosecutor said in a statement on Friday. The Ministry of Defense announced that Kroon is suspended in anticipation of his trial.

On Sunday, March 3rd, two police officers reprimanded Kroon for public urination. According to the Prosecutor, he subsequently insulted the two officers in an "improper and punishable way". He showed his genitals to one officer, and a rude gesture to the other, the Prosecutor said. When he was arrested, he headbutted one of the officers. 

Geert-Jan Knoops, the lawyer representing Kroon, has a somewhat different version of what happened. "He could not stop peeing and then it escalated", the lawyer said to NU.nl. According to Knoops, Kroon denies assaulting a cop. "As far as he can remember, that didn't happen."

Major Kroon was given one of the highest honors in the Netherlands, when Queen Beatrix made him a member of the Military Order of Willem - Fourth Class in 2009. Sadly, he faced several problems in the years that followed.

Most notably, he claimed in 2018 that he was abducted in Afghanistan in 2007, and then killed one of his captors weeks after he was released. His story was unable to be verified by the Defense Ministry which was working with the Public Prosecutors office. 

“During this short imprisonment I was harshly questioned, assaulted and severely humiliated. I was released at some point,” he said, without knowing the reason for his release. He claimed he spotted his Taliban kidnapper later by chance. “It was ‘him or me’ at that moment. I reached for my weapon on reflex and fired my entire magazine empty on the man’s body.”

In the year that followed his 2009 honor, Kroon was brought up on charges related to weapons and drugs. He was found guilty in 2011 of the weapons crimes for the possession of several electric shock devices.

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