Police in the Netherlands made two separate stops that led to a combined discovery of over 2,700 kilograms of illegal fireworks. Roughly two thousand kilograms was found after a 29-year-old in Enschede was found carrying boxes of the explosives to his car.
The man was quickly detained, allowing police to open an investigation into how he obtained the fireworks. That led police to two separate locations where the illegal material was discovered.
The vast majority of Dutch municipalities are staying out of the discussion around the appearance of Zwarte Piet at the Sinterklaas arrival parties in their cities. Only a small number set conditions regarding the controversial character in the Sinterklaas tradition, NOS reports after speaking to the 120 largest municipalities in the Netherlands, three quarters of which responded to the broadcaster's questions.
Dutch bankruptcy attorney Philippe Schol was still in recovery on Thursday after he was struck by a bullet during a drive-by shooting in Germany. The second high-profile shooting of a Dutch attorney in two months stunned police, prosecutors, and the Minister of Justice and Security.
Lawyer Philippe Schol was walking his dog some 50 meters from his home on Lossersestraße in Gronau when he was shot by persons in a passing car at around 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning. The victim told neighbors who rushed to help him that he was shot by two men he knows and that they were driving a Volkswagen Polo, the neighbors told newspaper AD.
More than 4 thousand schools in the Netherlands are closed today due to a large strike in primary- and secondary education. Teachers, school directors and other educational staff are striking for a structural solution against the teacher shortage in the country.
Whistleblower Paul van Buitenen is pressing charges of "undermining the rule of law" in the handling of the Enschede fireworks disaster in 2000 against the Dutch government, the municipality of Enschede, a number of Ministries, the Public Prosecutor, the police and others. The government and other parties involved are not only guilty of the disaster itself, but afterwards also covering up their own failures resulting in the wrong people being punished, Van Buitenen said to Tubantia.
The partial collapse of the AFAS Stadion roof earlier this month was caused by the downward force of heavy winds. The stadium, home of Alkmaar-based football club AZ, will now undergo a renovation in which roughly 75 percent of the roof will be renovated or replaced.
A bullet casing was found in the car of the men suspected of the murder of four men in an Enschede grow shop last year. Investigation revealed that the bullet casing corresponds to casings found at the scene of the murders, the Public Prosecutor revealed during a proforma hearing in the court in Almelo on Thursday, Tubantia reports.
On Monday the police turned the Karelskamp prison in Almelo inside out in search of a firearm, after one of the inmates received a threat saying that he would be murdered in prison. The target was Deja A., one of three suspects in a quadruple murder in Enschede last year, De Gelderlander reports.
A video of a 69-year-old Enschede woman enthusiastically attacking oak processionary caterpillars with a heat gun, is going viral in the Netherlands. According to Attie Saas, this is the only way to tackle these poisonous caterpillars - or "rotten beasts" as she calls them - which are currently plaguing the Netherlands.
In the video, Attie can be seen giving the caterpillars the finger, before burning them with the heat gun at close range. "I'll tackle them, those bastards."
Police in Enschede arrested a 33-year-old man on suspicion of burglary after he was found in the middle of the night by a three-year-old boy. The boy awoke late Monday night to the sound of loud footsteps in the garden behind his house.
“He thought there were maybe animals or monsters there. However, it was a wild, strange man,” police said in a statement.
Authorities praised the boy for alerting his mother to the suspicious person. She saw he was carrying a television and an electric bike and quickly called emergency services.
An air ambulance with an injured person on board was forced to make a detour just before landing in Enschede. A drone was suddenly flying in the helicopter's way. The police called this a life-threatening situation, RTV Oost reports.
The helicopter was on its way to the Medisch Spectrum Twente when a fairly large drone suddenly appeared. "The helicopter had to make a turn in order to land properly and a drone was suddenly flying right there. A collision was only barely prevented", the police said to the broadcaster. It is illegal to fly drones near hospitals.
The wrong people were convicted for a massive fireworks explosion in 2000 that leveled part of Enschede, left 23 people dead and 950 injured, De Groene Amsterdammer reports based on an investigation report by former whistleblower Paul van Buitenen. It was a government "cover-up affair", Van Buitenen concludes, according to the magazine.
The murder of four men in an Enschede grow shop last year was a Mexican woman's revenge for the death of her twin brother and 4-year-old daughter, crime reporter Hendrik Jan Korterink said based on information on a USB stick he received from a Russian man and telephone conversations with one of the suspects. The woman's brother and daughter were chopped into pieces and dumped into the Twente canal with over 100 kilograms of heroin and 100 kilograms of cocaine, according to the information, AD reports.
Enschede shooting injures one; Suspect evaded arrest
One person was shot and injured after a suspect opened fire in the center of Enschede, Overijssel. The victim was shot in the leg, police said. His injuries were not life threatening.
An area resident told regional news outlet Tubantia that they could clearly hear two shots fired. The offender fled the area after the shooting.
The incident happened at about 6:20 p.m. on Tuesday along the Hoge Bothofstraat. First responders on the ground were joined by a police helicopter in the air.
People across the Netherlands took to the streets Friday night and Saturday to celebrate King Willem-Alexander's birthday. By 4 p.m. on Saturday, only a handful of atypical arrests were announced by authorities.
The Enschede city council agreed to a support plan for FC Twente to prevent the football club from going bankrupt. The council agreed to write off part of the municipal loan to the club, and to convert another part of the loan into a subordinated loan on which no interest or repayment has to be paid. The condition to this agreement is that FC Twente returns its youth- and women's teams from Hengelo to Enschede as soon as possible, AD reports.
A Deutsche Bahn train was derailed by a fallen tree in Enschede on Wednesday evening. The salvage and cleanup work will likely take all day, according to rail manager ProRail. Currently no train traffic is possible between Enschede and Gronau, Germany, NU.nl reports.
The tree fell onto the tracks due to the bad weather conditions. The German train collided with it and derailed, ProRail reported on Twitter at around 8:20 p.m. None of the 35 passengers on board were hurt.
Dejan A., one of three suspected shooters in a quadruple murder in Enschede last year, tried to buy an automatic firearm shortly before the murders, the Public Prosecutor revealed in the court in Almelo on Tuesday during a pro-forma hearing against the suspected suppliers of the weapons used in the murders, De Gelderlander reports.
An Enschede resident is starting 2019 out 30 million euros richer. He or she won the main prize of the State Lottery's New Year's Eve draw. The draw fell on lot AV 83402, AD reports.
On Monday a record number of 32 lots per second were bought between 2:00 and 3:00 p.m. That amounts to over 115,000 lots in one hour. In total over 6.3 million lots were sold. The total prize package for the New Year's Eve draw came out at over 67.5 million euros.
Two people died during the Netherlands' New Year's celebrations last night. A man was killed in an explosion in Enschede. And in the Friesland town of Morra, a person was killed in a fireworks incident, according to the police.
The police responded to Gerstraat in Enschede shortly after midnight. At the scene they found a deceased man. "He likely died as a result of a fireworks explosion", the Enschede police said on Twitter. The police are investigating and call on witnesses to come forward.
The Rijksrecherche launched an investigation into the flow of information around the investigation into the murder of four men in Enschede last month. Over the past days many details about the murders were leaked and the Public Prosecutor is "very concerned", De Gelderlander reports.
Four men being murdered in a grow shop in Enschede earlier this month may be the result of a conflict over bad cannabis cuttings, sources from the Twente cannabis world told RTV Oost. Three suspects, a 57-year-old father and his two sons aged 30 and 32, bought a batch of cannabis cuttings that turned out to be of poor quality. They went to the grow shop to get their money back and things got out of hand, according to the broadcaster's sources.
The police arrested a third suspect in connection with the murder of four men in a business premises in Enschede earlier this month. The suspect is a 30-year-old man from Twente. He is suspected of involvement in the murders, the police said.
On Monday the police already arrested two men aged 32 and 57 on suspicion of involvement in the quadruple homicide. These two men are also suspected of an assault, in which shots were fired, in Hengelo on November 7th.
