5:37 p.m.
Max Wind is about to cross the road to the Amsterdam Stadsschouwburg just after half past five on Tuesday afternoon, when he thinks he hears fireworks. A security guard runs past him out of the Apple Store, his phone pressed to his ear. ‘Police, police, there’s a robbery!’ the man shouts.
Unsuspectingly, Wind crosses the road towards the theatre, where he has arranged to meet a friend. Only when he gets there, he sees a “chunky man with a hat of some kind” walking towards the door of the Apple Store. The man is armed and appears to be holding another man hostage. ‘It wasn’t until much later that I realized: those weren’t fireworks, they were shots,’ says Wind.
Veronica Baas, program maker of the nearby debate center De Balie, has just dialed 112. She went shopping at the Albert Heijn around the corner from the Apple Store at 5:30 PM and saw people ‘swing away like pigeons’, she tells. NRC† On the other side of the window, at five feet as the crow flies, she sees a man with a long, thin-barreled pistol. He seems to be rummaging through a display case. When she gets on the phone with the emergency room, it seems that they don’t know anything yet. But before she hangs up, the first police van stops in the square.
Wind has already fled into the theater with his friend and locks the door. Through an open window they see how more and more police officers, armed to the teeth, surround the Apple Store. Specialized police units are hiding. It is very quiet on Leidseplein.
18.22
The police confirm that they have been called out after a report ‘at a shop’. It is not yet possible to say exactly what the nature of the report is. Several people report hearing AT5 shots.
It becomes clear to the general public what is going on. A witness has filmed how the hostage-taker appears in front of the window. He wears some kind of camouflage suit and has his hood on. He has wrapped his left arm around another man: a 44-year-old Bulgarian, it turns out, who is a customer at the Apple Store. The hostage taker holds him at gunpoint with his right arm.
On a video of that going around, the hostage-taker is frantically walking back and forth. He kicks the window once. He also shouts things, but the cries are unintelligible. The images quickly spread through all social media channels.
19:00
The police are contacting the Victim Support picket service. Obviously, dozens of people are in the Apple Store and may be going through a traumatic experience. Victim Support immediately puts together a team of six people. An hour and 45 minutes later they arrive on location.
7:01 PM
An open laptop, a can of Red Bull, a cardboard cup of iced coffee, pliers and what looks like a box of pills. Displayed on a light brown table that unmistakably belongs to the hostage Apple Store in Amsterdam’s Hirsch building.
The scene can be seen in a photo that arrives on the Whatsapp phone of the local broadcaster AT5. The caption is confused. ‘Here speaks the hostage-taker, if the amount is not going to be sent. Was this sent? Is this man’s life partly the system on your conscience’, it reads.
The tip line is an important means for the broadcaster to gather information. And that works: the AT5 editors are sometimes informed about a stabbing or other accident by telephone than the police. Many Amsterdammers have the tip number in their telephone. Apparently the hostage taker too.
One of the photos is a penetrating selfie, which partly shows the faces of the hostage-taker and hostage. The online editor on duty consults with the editor-in-chief of AT5, Altan Erdogan (54), who is filling in as news chief for the first time tonight. “Not that much can happen tonight, right?” he joked to colleagues that afternoon.
They soon come to the conclusion that they are indeed dealing with the hostage-taker and decide not to publish the photos at this time. “You have to put on the brakes very hard,” Erdogan says later. ‘We may be the only ones with those photos, but it’s reporting on a black hole. We have not received any information from the police for hours, we do not know whether there are any more hostage-takers present. We don’t want to put people in extra insecurity.’
AT5 forwards the photos to the police. In the selfie, the man appears to be wearing a bomb vest, which reads ‘Kneede explosive’.
7:34 pm
The police know who the hostage-taker is: a 27-year-old Amsterdammer with a criminal record, partly because of violating the Weapons and Ammunition Act. He demands 200 million euros in crypto currency and threatens to blow himself up, the police announced later.
The man works at the Albert Heijn delivery service, report RTL News and other media the next day based on “resources surrounding the investigation.” It could explain why an Albert Heijn van with flashing lights was parked in front of the Apple Store on Tuesday evening.
Specialist units of the police are on site on Leidseplein to ‘get the situation under control’, the ANP news agency reports. The police are still reluctant to provide information. She doesn’t want to “disrupt the stakes there.”
The window of the city theater is now closed, as are the curtains. Inside, almost everyone is looking at their phone. The hostage situation can be easily followed on social media, thanks to all the photos, videos and live streams.
However, the police are very concerned that the hostage-taker is watching. That is why the force is contacting people who are broadcasting live images of the hostage situation, urging them to stop. The police also tweeted: ‘We would like to ask people with a view of the Apple Store to exercise restraint in publishing images or live streams.’ The next day, the police said that ‘sharing this kind of data in a situation like this could be very harmful and could have criminal consequences’.
7:39 PM
The specialist police units have taken heavy artillery, according to a video by a crime reporter from RTL Boulevard on Twitter. A Bearcat then arrives: a matt black vehicle of 6 meters long (weight: 9,300 kilograms) that can smash through walls and that must be able to withstand explosives and bullet showers.
8.01 pm
.’s live blog The Parool reports, citing “multiple sources,” that Apple Store employees and customers have entrenched themselves in an enclosed area above the store. Yvonne Coldeweijer’s ‘juice channel’ reports that that space would only be accessible with employee passes. According to ‘a spy’ – as she often refers to her sources – it concerns a large group that is safe there, ‘as far as it is possible’.
Numerous rumors and unconfirmed messages are now circulating on social media. The police are therefore again asking for restraint. AT5 editor-in-chief Erdogan: ‘At that moment you see a difference between traditional media and social media. We also knew that there were probably more people in the building, but if we don’t get confirmation from the police, we won’t do anything with it.’
20.30
A reporter from The Telegraph see about ten employees of the Apple Store at the Vondelpark, a few minutes walk from the store. They left the building via a staircase at the back of the building. They say that they waited a long time, until they received a sign that they could leave.
Secretly, the police clears the building step by step, because the impression is that the hostage-taker has no idea how many people are still there.
10 p.m
In the course of the evening, more and more people appear to be trapped in the building. The police eventually removes about 70 people. Around ten o’clock a group of people involved gathers at a bus of the public transport company GVB, where a crying girl is comforted by two young men. The bus leaves for a police building. There, those involved can make a witness statement and victim support is available.
22.34
The hostage taker asked the police for water. A robot then drives to the Apple Store with a bag containing a bottle of water. Inside, the hostage taker orders the hostage to open the door and get the water.
When the door opens, the hostage sprints out. The hostage taker immediately goes after him, weapon in hand. The situation is unclear and life-threatening.
In such situations, the suspect can be eliminated with targeted fire, according to the local police. An employee of the DSI (Special Intervention Service), who is standing nearby in a car, sees another possibility: he accelerates, drives forward and hits the hostage-taker. The man rolls over the hood, falls to the ground and remains motionless. Snipers are holding him at gunpoint, as evidenced by green laser beams aimed at his body.
It is icy quiet again on Leidseplein. What about that bomb vest, about which all kinds of reports are circulating? Police ask the man to raise his hand, a reporter hears from The Parool† If the hostage taker still doesn’t move, a robot drives over to examine him for explosives. Moments later, employees of the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Service venture closer. The suspect has explosives on his body, but they do not appear to be armed. He is seriously injured and taken to hospital, where officers are permanently guarding him. Police free more people from the building.
00.31
“These are terrible images,” said Amsterdam police chief Frank Paauw during a press conference about the collision. “But given the situation, we’re happy with this at the moment.” He praises the bravery of the hostage and the ‘alert, adequate’ response of the DSI. The National Criminal Investigation Department has launched an investigation. This always happens when the police use ‘a means of force’.
Then Paauw makes a remarkable revelation: ‘Four people who were in the store hid in a cupboard on the ground floor throughout the hostage situation. That was of course a very intrusive and threatening situation for them, so close to the hostage-taker. We knew they were there, luckily the suspect didn’t know.’
With the cooperation of Gijs Beukers
