The trial has begun in the Netherlands against nine people suspected of being involved in the murder of journalist Peter R. de Vries, shot dead on a street in the center of Amsterdam in 2021. The sentence is expected by summer. The first hearing took place on the outskirts of Amsterdam in a high-security courtroom, with many police officers present. In their testimony, some of the accused people said they were in no way involved in the murder, while others preferred not to respond.
A first trial began in 2022 against a Dutch man, accused of shooting de Vries, and a Polish man, accused of helping the other escape and collaborating in organizing the murder. Both were arrested less than an hour after the attack. However, the trial was postponed due to new information that emerged in the meantime: since then seven other people have been arrested on charges of being involved in the murder of the journalist.
De Vries was 64 years old and an investigative journalist. In the Netherlands he was well known because he had dealt with hundreds of criminal cases, including the kidnapping of Freddy Heineken, the beer entrepreneur, which occurred in 1983. De Vries had often been a guest on television programs covering crime stories and had played a key role in solving several unsolved cases. Over time he had received threats for the work he carried out and during some periods he had been guaranteed a police escort. He had also become famous outside the Netherlands thanks to his investigative work on the case of Natalee Ann Holloway, a US citizen who disappeared in Aruba, in the Caribbean, on May 30, 2005 during a post-graduation trip. Thanks to that work, de Vries had won an International Emmy Award, a prestigious television journalism award.