Earlier that day he and his girlfriend had boarded the train from Heerhugowaard to The Hague. B.: “I expected a nice demonstration about migration. And very good things were said.” When things went wrong, he had not been guided by curiosity, nothing else.
He should have done that differently, the judge says in his verdict. “If there is violence, you must actively leave it, not actively go there,” he tells him. Moreover, the judge B. blames a ‘leading role’: after he kicked the car, others threw fireworks into the car. He has to go to prison for five weeks, two of which are conditional, and a compensation of 1,500 euros.
Peter (49) from Amsterdam
“I flew with my flag, perhaps it seemed like I was hit a police bus,” says Peter van D. (49) from Amsterdam in court. He firmly denies the accusations that he has hit two vans with his flagpole, one of the ME and one of the police.
Van D. is a bald and calm man with a gray t-shirt on blue jeans. “It’s more than denying. It’s just ridiculous. It is very illogical that I would hit two vans on my own.”
He would have just stood in front of the stage until riots arose. “Then I went to the side of the field to look, because I had never seen anything like that.” He also didn’t know how he should have gone away, because “the ME was on all sides,” he says.
“I feel betrayed”
Van D. was actually not going to go to the demonstration at all, only in the morning did he see an announcement on social media, he says in the dock. He put a flag with him, traveled by train to The Hague and bought a plastic broomstick there, to use as a flag stick. “Not from wood, because I still thought: the police may take it.” It is unclear which flag it was.
The reason to go to the protest? “As a Dutchman, I feel pretty betrayed.” For three weeks, the man says he lives in a house of the Salvation Army, but before that he lived on the street for more than two years.