“I am convinced that if these suspects had asked for help from my father that night, he would have given them help,” said son Royce. “They pulled the trigger instead.”
At the request of Royce and daughter Kelly, Delano G. and Kamil E. looked at them as they made their statement. Kelly addressed the suspects directly: “Delano, I look at you the way you dared not look at my father when you shot him from behind.” The suspects’ children will also suffer the consequences of the murder for the rest of their lives, Kelly said. “My father will forever go down in the history books, just like you. But they will write about my father that he was a hero.’
Royce did not turn to the suspects during his story, but to the court. “Initially I wanted to address the suspects, express my sadness and anger or strike a chord with them,” he said. ‘But now I know that it’s completely pointless. Words have no effect.’ He therefore told how wonderful De Vries was for him and his family.
De Vries’s partner will use her right to speak during the hearing next Wednesday. Then the pleas of the lawyers of the suspects are also on the program. The Public Prosecution Service is expected to issue a sentence against the two suspects this afternoon.
Suspects present by order of the judge
De Vries was shot in the center of Amsterdam on 6 July last year. Nine days later, he succumbed to his injuries. Less than an hour after the attack, the police stopped the two suspects at an exit on the A4. In the getaway car, among other things, the converted emergency pistol with which De Vries was shot and a telephone with which the suspects communicated about the murder with an unknown person was found.
According to the OM, the suspected shooter is Delano G. (22) from Tiel. A cartridge holder with his DNA on it was found in the getaway car. The other suspect, Kamil E. (36) from Maurik, has conducted preliminary reconnaissance in the vicinity of the attack, according to the justice system. During the last preliminary hearing on Monday, the court ruled that both suspects must be present at the substantive criminal trial.
Kelly leaves the room at images of murder
During the hearing on Tuesday, images were shown of the moment when the perpetrator approached De Vries from behind near a parking garage on Lange Leidsedwarsstraat. Daughter Kelly briefly left the room because she didn’t want to see her father being killed. At the start of the hearing, the presiding judge had already warned that the trial could be shocking for those present.
G. declined to comment on the allegations during the hearing. E. again denied knowing anything about the murder. “I was just the driver,” he said. Shortly afterwards, E. claimed that on the day of the murder, a third man drove with G. and him from Rotterdam to Amsterdam. In previous statements, E. had not talked about this man. According to E., this man, who would also be Polish, had got out in Amsterdam after G.: he ‘had to do something’. Camera images show nothing of a possible third suspect. G. again invoked his right to remain silent.
The Public Prosecution Service assumes that the murder of De Vries is related to his role as adviser and confidant of Nabil B., the key witness in the Marengo liquidation process, around the main suspect Ridouan T. In 2018, B.’s brother Reduan was shot dead, in 2019 his lawyer Derk Wiersum. The investigation into the originators of these murders is still ongoing. The executors have been caught and tried. The Wiersum case is still on appeal.