Holland's Got Talent finalist Lars de R. along with four other men are on trial in Belgium this week for making and distributing child pornography. The Dutch man is suspected of sharing files of child pornography he made in India with his Belgian "child porn club", RTL Nieuws reports.
Crime
Jan 20 '20 13:40
Four men were arrested on Sunday afternoon for trying to break convict Omar L. out of the prison in Zutphen, where he is serving a life sentence. The four suspects all have French nationality and a background in North Africa, the Telegraaf reports based on "well informed" sources around the investigation.
The suspects crashed a delivery van into the Zutphen prison's gate at around 10:50 a.m. on Sunday morning, the police said in a statement. The van caught fire and the suspects fled.
Jan 20 '20 12:55
Shehzad Hemani will be tried in absentia for the role he played in the abduction of his then 2-year-old daughter Insiya from her grandmother's apartment in 2016. The same goes for his cousin Imran S., was revealed in a proforma hearing on Monday. Both men, as well as Insiya herself, are currently in India, the Telegraaf reports.
Jan 20 '20 11:10
Victims of dating fraud were scammed out of a total of 3,744,300 euros last year, almost double the 1,651,769 euros stolen from dating fraud victims two years ago, NU.nl reports based on figures from the Fraud Help Desk.
Last year, the Fraud Help Desk received 639 reports of dating fraud, compared to 412 in 2018. A total of 259 people fell victim to scams by someone pretending to date them in 2019. Victims were therefore scammed out of 14,457 euros on average.
Jan 20 '20 09:30
Dredging company Van Oord, ING Bank and credit insurer Atradius were all involved in an urban development project in Angola in which 3 thousand families were forcibly driven out of their homes to make from for the project, Trouw and Financieele Dagblad report based on leaked documents.
Jan 17 '20 17:00
A train passenger and her child were struck by a collapsed window after people threw rocks at their train car on Thursday. Police said two boys were arrested walking along the train tracks in Heerhugowaard soon after the Thursday afternoon incident.
The train was pelted with rocks at about 12:30 p.m. near Hectorlaan in the Noord-Holland town as the train was approaching the station. Police said they are looking to interview the mother and child, but they have not made contact with authorities.
Jan 17 '20 16:10
A 59-year-old man from Eindhoven is accused of raping a 15-year-old girl at a campsite in Luxembourg in 2017. Rob N. does not only deny these charges, but claims that the girl forced him to have sex with her. The Public Prosecution Service demanded 3.5 years in prison against the man in court on Friday, AD reports.
Rob N. and the girl knew each other for some time. According to him, the girl was having a hard time. And because she had never been on vacation, he took her for a weekend at a campsite in Luxembourg in August 2017.
Jan 17 '20 14:50
A large quantity of heroin was found hidden on board a ship in Rotterdam just before the end of the year, authorities at the port said. Police and Customs officers discovered some 439 kilograms of the narcotic hidden below a shipment of talc stone during a routine check.
The cargo was still inside a sea container on the ship when it was inspected, police said. Authorities seized and destroyed and destroyed the drugs.
No arrests were announced in the case, police disclosed on Friday. The investigation is still ongoing.
Jan 17 '20 13:05
Videos surfaced online showing a motorcycle police officers driving his bike up the stairs of the Rokin subway station on Amsterdam's Noord-Zuid line. Videos from various bystanders started circulating online on Thursday evening, though when the incident happened is not yet clear.
The video shows the officer driving his motorcycle up the stairs. At the top, the rear wheel slips and the bike tips. The officer jumped off the bike and appeared to be unhurt.
Jan 17 '20 11:05
The police arrested a 22-year-old man from Arnhem on Wednesday on suspicion of offering about 12 billion stolen usernames names and passwords for sale on website WeLeakInfo. The arrest was made as part of a joint investigation by the Dutch police, the United Kingdom's National Crime Agency, the United States' FBI, and Germany's Bundeskriminalamt.
Jan 17 '20 08:43
Two men were hurt in a shooting on Bas Jungeriusstraat in Rotterdam on Thursday evening. They were taken to hospital with serious injuries. The police are investigating what exactly happened.
The shooting happened at around 8:15 p.m. The two victims, 19 and 22 years old, were walking on the street when they were shot. Witnesses report hearing multiple gunshots and seeing multiple perpetrators, the police said in a statement. Shorty before the shooting, the victims were sitting in a car on Bas Jungeriusstraat.
Jan 17 '20 07:30
The children found living an isolated existence in a hidden space on a farm in Ruinerwold last year responded to a book about their father Gerrit Jan van D., which is being published on Friday. They were "hit hard" by the book Spookhoeve Ruinerwold, written by journalists Silvan Schoonhoven and Marcel Vink, they said on talk show Op1 on Thursday.
Jan 16 '20 17:40
The Netherlands saw a 16 percent increase in criminal discrimination cases filed in the country last year, with 63 cases above the 397 total recorded in 2018, data from the police department shows. It is the second straight year such an increase was posted in annual crime statistics.
Jan 16 '20 16:00
Six Dutch people were hurt when their van crashed on the A57 near Goch in Germany on Thursday morning. Three of the victims were seriously hurt, two of which are in critical condition, RTL Nieuws reports.
The accident happened at around 7:00 a.m. on Thursday while the van was trying to overtake a truck. The van hit the truck and ended up on its side, newspaper AD reports.
A helicopter was dispatched to take the injured to hospital.
The A57 towards Cologne was closed for multiple hours.
Jan 16 '20 15:10
Streaming media giant Netflix was accused of using the Netherlands as a major part of a tax haven scheme to reduce its income tax liabilities globally. A report released this week by Tax Watch UK said Netflix moved between $327 and $430 million into tax havens in 2018, out of its total global profits that year of $1.2 billion.
Jan 16 '20 13:30
Customs officers at the port of Vlissingen intercepted 921 kilograms of cocaine on Tuesday. The drugs were hidden in a container of bananas that came from Ecuador, the police said in a statement.
The drugs were discovered with a mobile scan. The police seized and destroyed the cocaine. So far no arrests were made.
The police are investigating.
Jan 16 '20 11:00
Gerrit Jan van D. regularly beat and abused his children in the around nine years they were kept secluded on a farm in Ruinerwold, according to accounts of how he drove "evil spirits" out of them that he wrote down himself and testimony the children gave the police. In some of those "exorcisms" Van D. used his "spiritual sword", the Telegraaf reports based on those accounts, which are described in the book Spookhoeve Ruinerwold set to publish later this week.
Jan 16 '20 09:19
After spending years in prison in Thailand, Dutch coffeeshop owner Johan van Laarhoven is on a plane back to the Netherlands. The plane has left Thai airspace and is expected to land at Schiphol Airport on Thursday evening, Van Laarhoven's family confirmed to NU.nl.
"We are incredibly happy with Johan's return," his brother Frans van Laarhoven said to the newspaper. "My family and I can't wait to have him back in our midst."
Jan 16 '20 07:53
Since the maximum penalty for murder was increased from 20 to 30 years in prison, the gap with the maximum sentence for manslaughter has become too large, Gerrit van der Burg, the chief executive at the Public Prosecution Service (OM) said to Trouw on Thursday. He wants to increase the maximum prison sentence for manslaughter, which is currently 15 years.
Jan 16 '20 07:29
More than 80 kilograms of cocaine was found on a Martinair Cargo plane in Argentina. Seven men, three of whom are Dutch, were arrested, including the plane's pilot and some crew members, RTL Nieuws reports.
The plane was at the Ezeiza International Airport near Buenos Aires when the drugs were discovered. Local media report that the discovery was made shortly before he plane was set to depart for Amsterdam, via Ecuador and Miami.
Jan 15 '20 16:10
The police registered a total of 21,302 trafficking related crimes in 2019, an increase of over 16 percent compared to the year before. The increase was mainly due to a spike in weapons trafficking and drug trafficking, according to an initial analysis of crime statistics released on Wednesday.
Jan 15 '20 14:30
Ahmad Al Y. is not an asylum seeker who deserves protection, but a war criminal who desecrated the corpses of killed opponents during the Syrian civil war, the Public Prosecutor said during the first proforma hearing in the case against the 30-year-old Syrian man in the high security court at Schiphol on Wednesday, AD reports.
Jan 15 '20 12:45
The number of sex crimes the police registered last year decreased by 13 percent compared to 2018, according to an analysis of crime statistics released on Wednesday. The main categories of violent crime combined to show only a slight overall increase in 2019 when compared to the year before, even as there were large increases in categories like forced labor, muggings, and threats of violence.
Jan 15 '20 11:40
A suspicious package was found on Amstelveenseweg in Amsterdam Zuid on Wednesday morning. The package was found at kosher restaurant Ha Carmel, which was previously the target of vandalism multiple times.
Eventually, police said no explosives were found in the suspicious package. But Jewish organization Federatief Joods NL said on social media that the "crystal clear" motive behind the incident was anti-Semitism. They noted that the restaurant has been targeted four times in two years.
