The shooting of a journalist – and the dark world of Dutch organised crime

In an attack that has rocked the Netherlands, a leading Dutch crime reporter is fighting for his life in hospital after being shot in broad daylight.

Last night, at around 7.30 p.m., the investigative crime journalist Peter R De Vries was shot five times on a busy street in central Amsterdam after leaving a television studio where he was recording a talk-show.

The horror on the face of the Amsterdam mayor was visible at a hastily-organised 11 p.m. press conference to discuss the attack, while tributes for De Vries flooded in from everyone from Dutch king Willem-Alexander to caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Rutte called the shooting ‘an attack on the freedom of the press… appalling for our democracy, justice system and society’. And Ferd Grapperhaus, caretaker justice minister, condemned the many-headed monster of organised crime which he said was ‘becoming ever more violent and unscrupulous’.

After the attack police sprang into action and with the help of video footage from bystanders arrested a 35-year-old Polish man living in Gelderland and a 21-year-old from Rotterdam after a highway chase.