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IRR > European Race Bulletin > Netherlands > Asylum seekers and refugees

Update on Kollum

By Liz Fekete

1 October 2001

Public pressure on murder investigation condemned

The Lower House has demanded an explanation into public interference in the Marianne Vaastra murder investigation. As the government considers new guidelines for the media in reporting criminal cases, the public prosecutor in Leeuwarden has laid the blame on the media saying that at the time of the police investigation one could not open a single newspaper without reading about the Marianne Vaatstra murder inquiry. 'And they all had the same tenor: namely, an attack on the judiciary for making a complete mess of it and failing to find the offender.'

Controversy over arrest of Iraqi 'suspect'

After a television documentary challenged the public prosecutor to explain how an Iraqi man, Ali Hassan Hussein, came to be arrested in Turkey in connection with the murder of Marianne Vaastra, despite the fact that all evidence had established that he could not be the offender, the justice ministry started an investigation into the arrest. In the documentary, public prosecutor R. De Graaf said that public pressure forced him to make an arrest. In normal circumstances this arrest would not have been made, but it had to be carried out to prevent large scale social unrest. While the public prosecutor has been praised, in some circles, for his honesty in risking his reputation to bring this situation to the public attention, the justice minister has contradicted his statement and said that he believes that there was sufficient suspicion against the Iraqi to justify his arrest. Later, De Graaf retracted his statement.

'Witch-hunt' journalist loses legal action

At the end of 2000, an Amsterdam court threw out a libel action brought by the journalist Peter R De Vries against the journalist Frits Abrahams, who is a regular columnist for the Handlesbad newspaper. Having written a column about the 'Kollum' affair for his newspaper, Abrahams went on to give an interview with the weekly magazine Vrij Nederland in which he attributed the lynch mob atmosphere directed against asylum seekers in Kollum following the murder of Marianne Vaatstra to the leading role played by Peter R De Vries. De Vries took an action against Abrahams, arguing that his comments implied he was motivated by racism. Abrahams refused to apologise. In a damning judgement, the judge condemned De Vries 'quasi realistic construction' of events and ruled that he had indeed played a central role in the subsequent witchhunt against asylum seekers.

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