53-year-old Johnny R. from Nieuw-Buinen is not responsible for threatening entrepreneurs and organizations that were involved in the construction of two wind farms in Drenthe and Groningen. The court in Assen acquitted the entrepreneur, who has a printing company in Stadskanaal, today due to lack of evidence.
The Public Prosecution Service found that there was enough evidence that R. was involved in sending black books with threatening texts and threatening letters. The Public Prosecution Service therefore demanded a hundred hours of community service two weeks ago. R. printed the documents on request, so that the now convicted Jan Nieboer from Nieuw-Buinen and Jan H. from Meeden could send them, the Public Prosecution Service said.
Fifteen companies that built the Drentse Monden and Oostermoer wind farms in Drenthe and the N33 wind farm in Groningen reported serious threats in 2019. The documents they received stated that they were included in the black book. Very bad things would happen if they continued their work and employees would have to constantly look back. They were only removed from the black book when they stopped working and publicized it through the media.
The threatening texts came from Nieboer and H., the court ruled last year. As foreman of Platform Storm, Nieboer had been campaigning against the arrival of the wind farms for years and H. did so in the past as foreman of Storm Meeden. Both men denied that their legal actions over the years turned into illegal ones, but has been proven according to the court.
Johnny R. several times received a USB stick from Jan Nieboer and printed the texts on it on request. R. has confirmed that. According to him, it was just work for which he was paid. He says he never knew exactly what the texts contained, because as a printer he doesn’t read everything he has to print. He also stated that he did not know what Nieboer and H. were doing.
According to the Public Prosecution Service, he should and could have known, because he knew that Nieboer was working on the windmill protest and because there was great unrest in the Veenkoloniën in 2019 about the arrival of the wind farms. The court thinks otherwise. She thinks there is too little evidence that he knew of the content of the texts and of the plans of the two ‘Jannen’.
R., like Nieboer and H., was arrested in June 2019. He was jailed for a total of three days, the shortest of all three men. Nieboer was imprisoned for six weeks and H. for six months. The ‘Jans’ were sentenced last year to one year in prison, of which six months were suspended. Nieboer maintains that he is innocent and has appealed. That is still ongoing.