Den Haag: A leading Dutch crime reporter rushed to the hospital after being shot on the road in Central Amsterdam on Tuesday night, and remained in serious condition, police said.
Peter R de Vries – A celebrity journalist in the Netherlands known to speak in the name of the victim of a crime – is “fighting for his life”, Amsterdam Mayor Femke Hallema told a press conference.
Witnesses told local media that the 64-year-old TV journalist and presenter were shot up to five times, including once in the head.
The police said three people had been arrested, among them the shooters were suspected, but did not provide details about the possible reasons of the attack.
Prime Minister Mark Rutte said at a press conference at the Hague Hague was “surprising and unimaginable”.
“It’s an attack on a brave journalist and with an attack extension on press freedom, which is very important for democracy and supremacy of our law,” he said.
De Vries was shot at around 7:30 a.m.
local time (1730 GMT) – still during the day at Amsterdam – when he left a television studio after appearing on the speech event.
Het Parool Daily’s newspaper quoted a resident who said he heard five shots and went to see what had happened.
He said he saw De Vries lying on the ground with a lot of blood on his face.
He told the newspaper that he could not speak but still alive, and that he held his hand when they were waiting for emergency services.
Minister of Rutte and Justice Ferdinand Grapperhaus met at the Dutch national coordinator for security and counterterrorism (NCTV) at night to discuss the shooting.
“This is a black day, not only for people who are close to Peter R de Vries, but also for the freedom of the press,” Minister of Justice Ferdinand Grapperhaus told reporters.
“In the Netherlands, we want journalists to be able to carry out investigations that must be done in full freedom.
This freedom has seriously violated tonight.” The Committee to protect journalists asked the authorities to “determine whether he was targeted at his work, and ensured that the attacker and mastermind of attacks faced justice”.
Solidarity messages flooded Dutch social media, including from the royal family, which posted on their official Facebook page that they were very surprised by the news, and that de Vries and the people they loved in their minds.
In the past de Vries had been given police protection after receiving a threat related to his involvement in a well-known criminal case as a reporter and in court.
One of these cases was the 1983 beer kidnapping Freddy Heineken.
His book about this case was then made into a film starring Anthony Hopkins.
In 2016, De Vries filed a complaint of death threats against one of the people involved in kidnapping, Notorious Gangster Willem Holleeder.
He won the Emmy International for solving the mystery of what had happened to US teenagers who disappeared from the Caribbean Island of Aruba in 2005.
Net-Si Broadcaster NOS reported that recently, he acted as an advisor to Nabil B, a state witness testified in the case of alleged Kingpin Medication opened in March.
Security around this case was extra fast in 2019, Nabiler Derk Wiersum lawyer was shot on the road outside his home.