Just before ten o’clock in the evening on May 19, the police received a report. It is a bumblebee lesson in the asylum seeker center in Zeist, a shelter with room for four hundred people. There would be destruction and a threat.
A video shows a uniformed officer approaching a pregnant woman with red hair. He tries to grab her arm. A colleague with a dog comes over and pulls her forcefully by her arm; as a result, the woman falls hard to the ground.
A man in a black shirt perks up. He charges at the policeman who pulled the woman down. He throws a punch. The officer hits back with his baton.
The video has now been widely shared online. The police announced on Saturday that the violence used during the arrest was being investigated, but did not want to answer questions NRC enter.
What the police reported in a press release on Monday eveningis that a COA employee allegedly took a bread knife from the man and that the suspect had “possibly a second knife” with him. According to the police, the woman was asked to leave several times “for her safety.” “When she did not comply, an officer grabbed her arm and pulled her away,” the police wrote. The officer allegedly did not realize that the woman was pregnant. He would have acted “differently” “if this had been the case,” the police said. After the incident, the woman was checked by ambulance personnel.
The man in the black blouse has published his side of the story online. His name is Wesam Miqdad, he is thirty years old and comes from Palestine, he says. Miqdad writes on Facebook that the woman with red hair is his wife and was nine months pregnant when the officer roughly pushed her to the ground. Five days later she gave birth to a daughter.
The heavy-handed police approach causes many angry reactions online. International media also picked up the incident. Al Jazeera headlined: Dutch police filmed throwing pregnant woman to ground. The UN Rapporteur on Human Rights in Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, also shared the images on
The police will investigate the violence used during the arrest, but do not want to comment further on the incident
The video led to so many angry reactions that the police decided on Sunday that it was no longer possible to respond to an earlier post about the incident on social media. According to a police spokesperson, there were “the most serious threats”. The spokesperson does not comment on the content of these threats and does not indicate whether they also concern personal threats from individual officers.
Asylum application rejected twice
In 2024, Miqdad and his wife end up in the Netherlands. He submitted his first application in the summer, but it was rejected. A year later he tried again, but now the immigration authorities rejected his request. From that moment on, Miqdad is not allowed to enter Europe for two years and must leave the Netherlands.
He had already wandered through Europe in the years before. It is not clear exactly when Miqdad left Gaza, but he writes on Facebook that he fled to Europe ten years ago. His wife first lives in Germany and receives a residence permit there. It is not clear how and where the two met each other.
Miqdad was imprisoned in Greece for four years. He does not write in his message why he was in prison. What he does write is that in Greece he got the feeling “that refugees are not treated equally there.”
But according to the Greek news site Zougla.gr, he belonged to a drug gang active in Athens. After he is released, Miqdad marries his wife in Berlin.
While the couple is now being transferred from reception location to reception location in the Netherlands, his wife becomes pregnant. Miqdad hopes that the Netherlands understands their situation, as a country “that respects human rights”. His (asylum) lawyer does not want to answer questions about her client and wants to wait for the police investigation.
Struggle in asylum seekers’ center
Miqdad, upset, walks to his room on May 19. There he breaks his television and refrigerator. He would have just heard that his brother had died in Gaza, says Miqdad’s wife in a widely shared video conversation with Diana Zwart and Martijn Koops, figureheads of the anti-asylum club Nationaal Protest. “Afterwards he was stressed,” she says.
COA calls the police, standard procedure. When the police arrive, Miqdad keeps quiet. “My wife told me to work quietly,” he says. But when he sees how a police officer throws his wife to the ground, he goes crazy. “The police knew my wife was pregnant.”
Three officers tackle the man to the floor. In the meantime, the woman is being pulled away by her scarf and arm. But what preceded the struggle cannot be seen on the video. And it is also not known who made the recording.
Miqdad is arrested and is ‘detained’ for four days, he says. The COA can take action in various ways against residents who cross the line. She can transfer them to another location for a week to a month, or withhold the weekly allowance. The COA spokesperson would not say whether this happened here. The COA does not wish to comment further on the incident and refers it to the police. “We do not discuss personal cases.”
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