Dutch authorities provide heavy security to 5 women per year at risk of honor killings
18-year-old Ryan al Najjar from Joure in Friesland was under heavy police protection shortly before her gruesome murder, the Leeuwarder Courant revealed earlier this week. The surveillance and security service, best known for protecting politicians like Geert Wilders or journalists like Peter R. de Vries, provides heavy security to at least five women every year due to the threat of honor killings, Nieuwsuur reports.
The Netherlands has two shelters that specialize in caring for women faced with honor-related violence. “We take in many girls who come from ‘honor cultures.’ These are mainly cultures from the Middle East where clear norms and values apply to how you deal with morality,” Judith Martens, a manager at one of these shelters, Sterk Huis, told the program.
This is not necessarily linked to religion, but to society, she said. “In these cultures, your actions reflect on your family. So if a girl does things that are not appropriate within a certain culture, such as having a boyfriend from another culture, having sex before marriage, dressing sexy, then that can tarnish the family’s honor,” Martins said.
The shelters have strict security measures, including camera surveillance, using code names for residents, and an alarm button that is in direct contact with the police. “And in extreme cases, individual personal protection can also be used, as was the case here.”
A passerby found Ryan’s body in a swamp in Lelystad in May last year. The Public Prosecution Service (OM) believes that Ryan’s father and brothers killed her because she was behaving “too Western.” They allegedly planned her murder in a WhatsApp group.
Journalists from the Leeuwarder Courant discovered that the Syrian girl was under heavy security, but that stopped shortly before her murder. “In 2023, Ryan ran out of the house barefoot. She rang the neighbors’ doorbell and said: Help, my father wants to kill me,” journalist Zander Lamme told Nieuwsuur. “They called the police, so at that time, the police must have already been aware that things were not right in that family.”
The OM declined to say why Ryan’s security was stopped, Lamme said. “We spoke to an employee of the OM who knows a lot about the system of monitoring and securing. He said that it is rare for people to be able to leave the system if there is a case of honor killing. Because that threat remains. Once family members think: we want to kill someone because they have violated our honor, the chance that it will just go away is small.”
Lawyer Johan Mühren, who represents one of the suspected brothers, said that he did not know Ryan was getting protection. “I am very curious, especially about the question of why that security stopped at some points.”
The brothers deny involvement in their sister’s murder. They admitted taking Ryan to their father, “but they never expected that their father could be capable of this,” Mühren said.
The father allegedly confessed to killing his daughter in two emails to the Telegraaf. He is still at large and believed to have fled to Syria.
