The Groningen demo world felt like a warm bath for Tjeerd P., who was on trial on Monday for arson and attempted murder of local journalist Willem Groeneveld. “I felt heard,” he says about dealing with his fellow protesters against the corona measures. “For the first time I felt the love I had never received before,” said the suspect in the court in Groningen. The words come out easily, while the mentally retarded P. usually has so much trouble formulating. He is on trial together with Jaimy John W., with whom, according to the Public Prosecution Service, he threw a Molotov cocktail through a window in Groeneveld’s front door on the night of August 18 to 19 last year.
That night the journalist of the city blog Sikkom and his girlfriend are sleeping upstairs. They are awakened by glass clinking. Groeneveld thinks it is outside, but at the insistence of his girlfriend he walks down the stairs. †what the fuck”, can be heard on camera images when he sees a fire in the hall. With the contents of a pan of dinner still on the stove, he quickly extinguishes the flames.
They are still not over the shock. “Can I go to the pub, can I go to FC Groningen, or do I have to skip it?”, says Groeneveld about his lost sense of safety when he is given the floor as a victim in court. “The smell of the first barbecue in the area recently brought me back to that night,” says Groeneveld. “After the attack, our house turned into a small prison. I don’t dare to let Willem go anymore,” says his girlfriend.
Corona measures
The two suspects of the attack got to know each other during demonstrations against the corona measures in Groningen. Last spring, torchlight marches were organized weekly in the city center, and coffee was drunk together on Sundays in the Noorderplantsoen, consciously without keeping a distance.
The then 30-year-old Tjeerd P. then lives in a complex for assisted living and has been badly affected by the pandemic. “All those people with corona and mouth caps. I had a hard time dealing with that,” he said on Monday. P. grew up in institutions and for a long time lived in a foster family, which, in his opinion, only had him in the house because of the financial compensation that was offered.
He joins the demonstrations in opposition to the government measures. Jaimy John W., 32 at the time, is there mainly out of boredom. Since the start of the pandemic, he regularly uses hard drugs again. In his own words to ease the pain of the fact that he is no longer allowed to see his two children, with two different mothers.
Tjeerd P. follows broadcasts of De Blauwe Tijger on the internet. This Groningen publishing house is described by counterterrorism coordinator NCTV as a “conduit for anti-government propaganda, fake news and conspiracy theories”. He also watches it on Youtube Red Pill Journalof conspiracy theorists who were sentenced to prison terms last week for threatening RIVM boss Jaap van Dissel and Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
Read more about the Red Pill Journal: Justice hunts for network conspiracy thinkers
Vodka and cocaine
In one of the broadcasts, the blog on Sikkom van Groeneveld, which strongly criticizes the Groningen corona protesters, is called “worse than the entire NSB in World War II”. P. sends the film to his co-defendant with the proposal to spray graffiti on Groeneveld’s house. Jaimy John W. does not want to know anything about it at that time. “I don’t want to be stuck,” he responds.
On August 18 last year, journalist Groeneveld again wrote critically about a demonstration attended by Tjeerd P.. ‘Twenty demonstrate peacefully at the GGD injection box in Paddepoel. Vaccine is gene therapy and more of that kind of bullshit’ reads the headline.
That night things go wrong. The two suspects drink half liters of beer and vodka at Jaimy John W.’s home. Cocaine is also used. In court they accuse each other of coming up with the plan for the Molotov cocktails. They are made clumsy with a toilet paper wick. The empty beer bottles are filled with white spirit, which is much less flammable than the usual petrol. The risk of fatal injury as a result of this attack was small, according to the Netherlands Forensic Institute.
Also read: How a Groningen blogger became a target of corona extremists
According to experts, both suspects are less accountable due to psychological problems. That does not detract from the seriousness of the case, according to the public prosecutor. “Journalists, with a public task, simply need to be protected,” he says in his speech. The officer speaks of “violent extremism” and demands a prison sentence of five years for both suspects and a TBS treatment with conditions. Their lawyers argue that there was no preconceived plan and state that the two only wanted to frighten Groeneveld with their clumsy attack. Verdict in two weeks.