From ‘Volksraad’ to ‘Sheriffs’: these sovereigns reject the authority of the government

Robertine walks to the desk that is littered with described notebooks, file folders and tins tobacco. In the corner there is a weapon safe with a green helmet on it. “This was our office,” she says. The Common Law office, Noord-Holland department.

“We humans helped here.” They were often people with payment arrears. They were able to report in Robertines terraced house in Schagen. “We then sent a letter back for them. That there is no fault at all. “

You could see her, she says with a serious look, “like a modern Robin Hood.”

Now the office is closed. The leaders of the organization are in prison. According to the Public Prosecution Service, nine members of Common Law and related militias form a terrorist organization. Most come from villages from the east of the Netherlands. Common Law would be led by Neeltje de B., a 66-year-old Zeeland. According to the OM, the grouping owned its own arrest trips and would like to pick up mayors and bring them to a people’s tribunal. Friday, March 7, the nine is in court in an interim session.

Common Law fits within a broader movement of self -proclaimed sovereigns, according to the OM. They do not want to submit to the authority of the government. That is why they refuse, among other things, to pay taxes. More and more citizens appear receptive to these ideas, Safety Services AIVD, NCTV and the police signaled in a joint report last year. A few tens of thousands of Dutch people ‘to a greater or lesser extent “would adhere to the sovereign ideas.

It is a very varied movement, describes the report: from peaceful citizens who think they can ‘deregister’ at the Dutch state, to groups that try to set up their own citizen militias. According to the security services, the perspective of the sovereigns offers “a way out for a variety of people who feel insufficiently heard by the government.”

Like -minded

In the terraced house in Schagen, Koen (50), Rob (60) and Robertine (62) are eating pumpkin soup. The three, who do not want to be mentioned with their last name, were members of the Common Law group. Although they do not want to speak of a ‘group’. An organization then? “Not either.” Sovereigns? “That’s how we are labeled.” Koen: “We are like -minded people who have found each other in investigating the injustice that is being done to us.”

During Corona it became Koen, interim finance manager, really clear. When he saw the television speech in March 2020 in which Mark Rutte announced the pandemic, he was wrong. “The whole country in turmoil around a virus. I just didn’t believe it. “

The Volksraad ruled in the hair salon: the tax authorities were not allowed to auction the case of Hettie, which refused to pay VAT at all

Koen went looking for supporters and found it among Corona activists who dismissed the virus as a flu. He started demonstrating and helped hand out leaflets at vaccination centers to warn of the “toxic” vaccine. He obtained a lot of information from ‘alternative’ sources, which he encountered in telegram groups. For example, he became deeper and deeper in a movement that not only regards the Coronapandemie, but also, for example, the attacks on the Twin Towers or the recent forest fires in Los Angeles as conspiracies.

“They also call it one Rabbit Hole“Says Koen. A rabbit hole. “Once you dive in there, you will come across more and more things that you don’t want to know.”

Neeltje

In this movement of original Corona activists, Koen also gets to know Rob and Robertine. They organize walks to share their worries with each other. “And to wake each other,” says Robertine. They come together in living rooms and community centers, with around twenty to thirty people.

Neeltje de B., the leader of the group suspected by the OM, was a regular visitor to the meetings. In the living room in Schagen they know her as “a treasure” and “a very intuitive and wise woman”, who above all knows a lot about the ideas of Common Law. What exactly does that mean? “It comes down to,” says Robertine, “that the Dutch government is a company.” And not just the government. All other government agencies such as the police, the court or the tax authorities would also be companies.

That conviction leads to the fact that sovereigns do not consider themselves bound by the authority of these governments. “A company cannot oblige us to pay taxes,” explains Robertine. They only feel bound by a few basic rules: “You will not kill, not steal, do not force it and not lying.”

The group decides to set up Common Law. It is mainly active on social media and wants Common LawEntering the customary law in the Netherlands. Regional departments are created throughout the country. Sometimes in a physical place, such as Robertine from her house in Schagen runs the North Holland branch. And sometimes they had no more than a telegram group. “But there it remained so quiet that we were lifting those groups in the autumn of 2023,” says Koen. “From that moment on we started focusing on the Volksraad.”

Human rights

The barber shop in Schijndel is full of people in January 2024. There are jugs with coffee and tea on the table. The Volksraad has united to stand up for the ‘human rights’ of hairdresser Hettie, says one of them.

Outside are a bailiff and a police officer. Hettie puts both hands on her heart, then folds them together and looks up hopefully. Then the Volksraad goes outside. Neeltje de B. gives a speech for the hairdressing store: “It is now the responsibility of the people to implement the verdict,” she says. “We must make it clear to the convicted people, but also future accused, that we as a people claim our inalienable rights and no longer let ourselves be cowed by a small elite.”

When Rutte announced the pandemic, Koen felt that something was wrong: “The whole country in turmoil around a virus: I just didn’t believe it”

When Neeltje is finished, the bailiff and agent enter. The inventory of the hairdressing store of Hettie must be sold, after a conflict with the tax authorities. As a sovereign, Hettie thought she no longer had to pay VAT on her income. The tax authorities gave her a fine. Because she refused to pay it, the tax authorities wanted to have its things auctioned.

Then Hettie had called in the help of ‘the people’. Everyone could engage a tribunal via the Common Law site. You only had to fill in a form. “If someone has harmed you or your family in any way, you will start legal proceedings within Common Law in this way,” said.

So Common Law came to the barber shop in December 2023, a video shows on Facebook. A folk jury with more than a dozen local residents and Koen and Neeltje de B. as ‘process supervisors’. After an eight -hour meeting, the ‘Volksraad’ ruled: the Tax Authorities had given the Hettie Hettie insufficient opportunity to consult a solution. The auction could therefore not continue.

“A nice statement,” said Koen. The judgment was handed over to the Tax Authorities and the mayor of Meierijstad, the municipality of which Schijndel is a part. Nevertheless, on January 18, 2024, the Common Law members had to watch carefully how the tax authorities did not care about their judgment and did the business for sale.

Sheriff

In a huge conversation, suspects Arjan van den B. and Marco M. said, according to the OM that they were too little to stop the sale with violence. But Common Law would have had that ambition, the judiciary thinks: the group wanted the jury judgments to be maintained by self -appointed sheriffs, also known as ‘peace officers’. A special ‘sheriff manual’ on their site states that they ‘are reinforced with complete powers such as research, arrest and capture’. According to the manual, the ‘armed’ sheriffs can also deposit and lock former agents of the old regime.

These ideas were not only in their manifestos, but according to the OM actually lived within the group. For example, suspect Marco comes to the police station indignantly for the auction of the barber shop, because the bailiff does not want to listen. Marco introduces himself as a ‘peace officer’ and says: “As peace -enforcement officers, we have the same goal as you, the police: protect public order.”

They would also have spoken at a meeting in a community center about ‘getting the chessboard with military precision’ of authorities, which, according to the OM, means a murder attack. According to the judiciary, Ron König, the mayor of Deventer, was under the targets.

Spin

Robertine starts to laugh in the living room in Schagen. HAHAS! She, violent? How do they go with it. The group wants to come into resistance, for sure, but not with weapons. “We want to put them around with the ears.”

According to Robertine, she recently returned her own weapons, but she still has two air rifles, because “you can just have it.” “Wait,” she says. She walks to the kitchen and returns with a shooting rose. “Here I get along alone. Simply because it’s fun. Develop your own expertise. Adjust the weapon so that you hit the rose nine out of ten times. I only shoot on paper. And on plastic spiders. ”

In the rest of the group, no weapons would go around, says the three. Apart from one of the members, who would have a crossbow at home. Robertine: “And that is just allowed.”

Common Law members have a few basic rules: ‘You will not kill, not steal, not forcing and not lying’

They partly recognize the aggressive language that, according to the OM, sounded on eavesdropping meetings and in the chat groups of Common Law. You should see that as an “expression of frustration”. Koen: “People don’t know what to do. What do you do then? Then you blow something out. “

For example, the group that has been labeled by the OM as a terrorist organization is experienced in Schagen: as a talk group of people who have found each other in their desperation. And in the discovery of a big secret, that offers hope: that they can withdraw as ‘sovereign’ from the government they see as their enemy.

It is only a matter of time before the rest of the world falls off the eyes. Rob points to the election of Donald Trump and the appointment of Antivaxxer Robert Kennedy Jr. As an American Minister of Health, people he sees as supporters. “They will Common Law enter again. ”

Signature

After the interview, Robertine wants to reveal one more abuse. She walks to her office and opens the police investigation of a Common Law suspect on the computer, which she received from the lawyer. She shows a photo of a weapon found at the suspect at home. It is on the stairs for a white action bag. “So they removed that weapon from that bag. I call it mess with evidence. ”

She scrolls through the research with her mouse and stops at an official report. It is signed by an anonymous agent. “Do you see that? They only give a registration number. ” That’s not right, says Robertine. “There should be a full name, signed with a wet signature.”

Rob and Robertine look at each other. “The investigation is therefore not valid.”

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