Police investigating several suspects for threatening author Pim Lammers

The police and the Public Prosecution Service (OM) are looking at several suspects in the criminal investigation into threats, defamation, and abusive comments against writer Pim Lammers. These suspects are expected to be questioned soon, said the police in the Midden-Nederland district on Monday.

The police want to “speed up the investigation, to send a clear signal,” said a spokesperson. “We are taking this matter very seriously. Free speech is a great asset.”

Lammers resigned his assignment for the Children’s Book Week two weeks ago because he was sent death threats. These followed after attacks against Lammers were posted to social media sites regarding an old story for adult audiences he wrote nearly a decade ago. The story is about the escalating relationship between a teenage boy and his sports trainer. The fuss arose after a Christian lobby group, presenter Monique Smit and model Kim Feenstra, extracted sentences from the story and shared them online. The award-winning author was accused of “pedo activism.”

The Public Prosecution Service has assessed some of the many hundreds of messages and responses to Lammers. “Many reactions are very nasty, but not legally punishable,” explained the police spokesperson. He said the OM believes that in several cases, there may have been criminal law violations regarding the publication of certain reactions.

Lammers was not the only person to receive death threats; some authors who defended him were also targeted. Authors and publishers then decided to place a full-page advertisement in all national newspapers to show their support for Lammers, and bookshops also supported him. They paid extra attention to the writer’s works by, for example, displaying his work in a prominent place and hanging posters with his poems.

In fact, since the incidents received attention, books written by Lammers have been in great demand in bookstores, said publishers association CPNB earlier this month. Various bookstores also supported the assertion on social media.

One secondary school teacher cut a deal with the Mulder book retailer in Amsterdam to purchase 500 copies of Lammers’ poetry collection, Ik denk dat ik ontvoerd ben with the purpose of giving a copy “to all his students,” the store said on Facebook.