Hostage taking in a cafeteria in the Netherlands: the Police indicated that it would not have a “terrorist motivation”

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Hostage taking in Ede, Netherlands

Several people were taken hostage this Saturday in a town in the center of the Netherlands, said the Police, who specified that there were no indications of a possible “terrorist motivation.” Three people were freed and are safe. However, the situation “continues,” the force explained.

“We see that there are many questions about the motive. At the moment, there are no indications of a terrorist motive,” the source said.

It is unknown how many people were being held but, according to local media, there were between four and five.

A police cordon was established around a cafe and residents of about 150 homes were evacuated.

The City Council indicated on its website that the city center was closed, and that riot police were deployed in the area.

According to the newspaper De Gelderlander, according to first reports, the hostage taking began at 6:30 in the morning in the Petticoat cafe. According to the pub’s schedule, there was a party there at 4:00.

As a precautionary measure, rail traffic between Barneveld Zuid and Ede-Wageningen has also been suspended. Currently there is no alternative means of transport because, according to the railways, “no bus can stop at Ede Centrum”.

In recent years, some attacks have occurred in the Netherlands, but not on the scale of other European countries such as France or the United Kingdom. Police have also thwarted several attacks.

In 2019, a shooting on a tram in the city of Utrecht, in which four people died, caused great shock in the country.

The perpetrator of the attack, Gokmen Tanis, later admitted that he had acted for terrorist reasons. The shooting virtually paralyzed the country’s fourth-largest city.

Also in 2019, the Dutch police charged two people, suspected of jihadism, with planning an attack with suicide bombers and car bombs. According to the authorities, those arrested planned to carry out the attack that same year.

A year earlier, a young Afghan man, identified as “Jawed S.”, stabbed two American tourists at Amsterdam central station. When appearing before the judge, he stated that he intended to “protect the Prophet Muhammad.”

The attack occurred a day after the far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders announced that he was backing down on the organization of a caricature contest of the Prophet Muhammad.

At that time, the spokesman for the Afghan Taliban Zabihullah Mujahid urged Muslims to attack the Dutch military, due to the “hostile action of that country” against all Muslims.

In 2004, film director Theo van Gogh, openly hostile to Islam, was shot and stabbed to death in Amsterdam by a man linked to a Dutch Islamist network.

(With information from AFP)