Two arrested for manufacturing weapons for sovereign movement
The police arrested two more suspects in an investigation into a sovereign criminal network. “They are both suspected of manufacturing firearms,” the police said on Wednesday.
Officers arrested a 34-year-old man from Etten on Thursday, October 9. The police searched warehouses in Etten and Gendringen and a chalet in Braamt, seizing firearms, firearm parts, and narcotics.
A 55-year-old man from ‘s-Hertogenbosch was arrested in Velddriel on Tuesday, October 14. The police searched a home in ‘s-Hertogenbosch and seized narcotics. This man was previously also arrested as part of this investigation, but his pre-trial detention was suspended by a court.
According to the police, the two men belong to a criminal network of “sovereign citizens” - people who follow an anti-institutional ideology. Eight suspected members of this criminal organization were arrested in June on suspicion of “collectively committing criminal offenses aimed at collecting or intending to use weapons and dangerous substances.”
According to the Public Prosecution Service (OM), the suspects intended to carry out a terrorist attack on government institutions or officials around the NATO summit in The Hague. “The aim was to violently resist the current system and to disrupt or destroy existing structures,” OM said in September.
Self-proclaimed sovereign citizens form a subgroup within anti-institutional extremism. They view the Dutch government as illegitimate and believe they are not bound by laws or regulations. Last year, the counter-terrorism authority NCTV reported that the number of sovereign citizens in the Netherlands had grown to tens of thousands in recent years. A small number may not shy away from violence in their resistance to government institutions, the NCTV said.
