Pregnant woman thrown to ground in asylum shelter pressing charges against cop
The pregnant woman whom a police officer threw to the ground at an asylum shelter in Zeist on May 19 has filed charges against the police. She accuses the police of attempted aggravated assault, assault, or violation of the use-of-force instructions, her lawyer Willem Jebbink told NU.nl.
“In the well-known footage, my client is roughly thrown to the ground. There was no necessity for this forcefulness. The lack of professionalism in the handling is such that, in our view, it constitutes intentional assault,” Jebbink said.
The lawyer hopes to establish that his client was a victim of assault. “That acknowledgement is important. But it must also ensure that in the future, other people do not have to deal with this type of assault either.”
The police responded to the asylum shelter in Zeist after reports of an aggressive man. According to the police, the woman interfered with their attempts to arrest the man. After multiple warnings, a police officer pulled her backward by her arm, and she fell to the floor. The officer said that he did not realize the woman was pregnant.
The woman’s daughter was born less than two weeks after the incident. She is healthy and well, the woman said in an interview. She said that the officer pulled her to the ground while she was trying to ask him a question. She wanted to know whether she could go with her husband if he was arrested. She didn’t want to be alone this late in her pregnancy.
“I spoke English, although my English isn’t very good. The police officer responded to me in Dutch, or something else. I don’t know, I didn’t understand him, and he didn’t understand me,” she said
“They may have thought that I was being defiant, but I wasn’t. I was just asking an ordinary question,” she said. “Even if we were in the wrong, even if they believed we were in the wrong, neither my husband nor I deserved this violence or this level of brutality against us.”
After an internal investigation, the police concluded that the intervention was necessary to ensure the safety of those involved.
