The police officer who shot a confused asylum seeker in his thigh on 18 June last year in Ter Apel, has acted lawfully. The Public Prosecution Service (OM) comes to that conclusion after extensive investigation by the National Criminal Investigation Department.
According to the OM, the use of the firearm by the agent, after extensive facts by the National Criminal Investigation, was in accordance with the police force instruction. This also applied to the violence that another police and agent agent applies from the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee. They used a baton and pepper spray during the incident.
The incident took place in Ter Apel last summer. During their lunch break, two police officers witnessed an incident with an aggressive man and a supermarket owner. According to the latter, the man tried to steal something. The agents then decided that they wanted to bring the man back to the registration center and had a van.
The man had left, but was spotted in the Hema a little later. When the agents wanted to arrest the man, a struggle arose. Pepper spray and a baton were used. When the baton fell on the floor, the man managed to get hold of it. With that baton he then made sloping movements to the agent and put wildly around him.
“He is wild and aggressive and there is no contact with him. The agent is deteriorating but cannot continue,” the OM writes. He no longer responded to the pepper spray that used the Marechaussee either. When the man was approached less than two meters, the agent fired one warning shot and shot once on the man’s legs.
“We are very happy that the agents are in the right and that they finally know where they stand,” responds owner Petra Niemeijer of the Hema in Ter Apel. “We hope that with the court case we can finally put an end to the shooting incident. We are now focusing on our store again.”
The man shot in court will be in court on 13 May.