Cop's baton strike at Amsterdam protest left shopper with serious brain injury: lawyer
The woman who was injured during a riot police charge on the Nieuwendijk in Amsterdam last week Sunday suffered a serious brain injury, her lawyer Richard Korver said in a statement on his website. The riot police were intervening in a banned protest on Dam Square. The woman was not involved in the protest but was shopping with her husband and daughter, Korver said.
A video on the YouTube channel Left Laser shows the riot police hitting people with batons and shields after plainclothes officers go through the line with a suspect and a man runs towards the riot police from behind. About ten seconds later, a riot police officer hits the woman and she falls backward, hitting the back of her head on the pavement. She also has a wound on her forehead. The strike is at around minute eight of the video.
“When the atmosphere turned grim, she tried to get past the riot police with her daughter and asked if they could go through because they wanted to get away from that grim atmosphere,” Korver said. Instead, the officer hit her in the face with a baton.
According to the lawyer, the woman lost consciousness several times and it took at least 45 minutes for an ambulance to get to her. “The woman was asked several times whether she was a demonstrator because that would be important for the question of which hospital she would be taken to. That is very surprising,” Korver said.
Korver said that the woman has pressed charges against the police and asked for an investigation into the violence and for the results to be published as soon as possible. “This is all the more important because there is a lot of unrest in Amsterdam and it is expected that the police will intervene more often in the coming days/weeks,” the lawyer said.
A police spokesperson told AT5 that the violence used and the context around it is being investigated with priority. The spokesperson wouldn’t comment on the woman’s injuries or when the results of the investigation would be available.
Protesters involved in another banned protest on Dam Square on Wednesday have also pressed excessive force charges against the police.
