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The Netherlands is shocked by the attempted murder of a well-known police reporter

The famous Dutch police reporter Peter De Vries, known for his investigations which have brought to light crimes of the Dutch underworld, was shot yesterday on a street in Amsterdam and seriously injured, police announced.

“Peter de Vries was shot in Lange Leidenswartstratt,” a police statement said, referring to a street near one of the city’s largest public squares. The journalist was in a TV studio a little earlier.

He was taken to a nearby hospital in “serious condition”., said the police, who called eyewitnesses to contact the authorities.

Police cordoned off the area as people gathered near the site of the incident.

De Vries won an international Emmy Award in 2008 for topicality in his investigation into the disappearance of teen Natalie Holloway in Aruba in 2005.

An alleged gunman was arrested shortly after the incident, the Algemeen Dagblad newspaper reported, citing anonymous sources. Police said they were unable to confirm or deny the report.

The Dutch broadcaster RTL broadcast that De Vries had just left his studio in the center of Amsterdam and that he received one of the bullets in the head.

Amsterdam’s Parool newspaper published a photo from the scene, which shows many people gathered around a person lying on the ground.

The 64-year-old reporter is famous in the Netherlands as a regular commentator on television crime investigation programs and as an experienced police reporter with sources in both law enforcement and the underworld.

He is known in his home country for his investigations into countless cases, especially after the 1983 abduction of 1983 beer mogul Freddy Heineken.

He has received threats in the past from underworld criminals in connection with several cases.

In 2013, Willem Holder, Heineken’s abductor, was convicted of making threats against De Vries. Holder is currently serving a life sentence for his involvement in five murders.

In 2019, Riduan Tagi, who is on trial for murder and drug trafficking, denied reports that he had threatened to put people to death de Vries.

The attack on a Dutch journalist specializing in criminal cases, who was seriously wounded by bullets last Tuesday night in Amsterdam, is “shocking” and “unthinkable”, said the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte. granted to The Hague.

«The attack on Peter R. de Vries is shocking and unthinkable, it is an attack on a courageous journalist and therefore an attack on the freedom of the press, which is fundamental to our democracy and the rule of law.“, Said Mr. Rute.

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