Explosive harassment is hard to solve and here’s why
Houses shot at, homemade bombs in front of the door and blown up cars. These are attacks with a lot of impact, for which 21 percent of those cases have been arrested in the past 2.5 years. Clients often remain unaffected. “The environment is hardening. These investigations are often a matter of a long one,” says the Brabant detective boss Ron van Brussel.
“I see a hand grenade, on high, at the bakery. Parisian Boulangerie. Can you come as soon as possible?” On the night of May 23, 2021, this report is received at the control room. A young man hastily calls in his tribe. With interim police cars to the bakery on the Baliendijk in Breda. There is indeed a hand grenade hanging from the shutter.
“Perilously dangerous,” a police spokesperson later told Opsporing Verzocht. The municipality is closing the case, also because this is already the fifth in a series of six violent incidents against one and the same family. Earlier it targets a liquidation attempt and a brother blackmailers at the door. Other times, bombs were also found at companies belonging to this family: the bakery and a car garage.
The target and his family don’t want to lose much. Although it is suspected that they are involved in a brutal cocaine war. According to police and justification, these are extreme examples of intimidation, attacks and extortion. Often a result of quarrels in the fault circuit.
“Victims don’t always have an interest in telling what the context is.”
In 2.5 years, there were 95 such incidents in our province, according to research by Omroep Brabant. Nobody is in 21 percent of these cases. According to the investigative services, investigations are underway. “Some targets do not dare to tell where the threat comes from”, press officer Janine Kramer of OM East Brabant names the biggest problem.
According to the detective Ron van Brussel van Brabant, the role of detailed transactions is, but it is often lacking. “Often they are afraid of reprisals. Sometimes it has to do with executing the victim himself. Even then they don’t want to say anything.”
Although that is not always the case. “In conflicts in the relational sphere, people do want to tell us what is going on. That helps us enormously”, Van Brussel.
“There are few people on the street who see it happening.”
Another factor that makes investigations difficult, according to the investigative services, is the onset of violent intimidation. That always applies late in the evening of the night. “There are few people on the street who see it happening,” says Kramer. “If there are camera images, then the question is how good they are.”
So little cooperation and few witnesses. And also in terms of trace research, the often occurring one is meager. “If there is a shot, you examine the casings. But often it is only limited what you find,” says Kramer. Yet the investigative services are not powerless. Van Brussel: “We can still do a lot, such as technical, tactical and digital research.”
“Performers often don’t even know what the underlying conflict is.”
And if you manage to arrest someone. Van Brussel: “Executors who shoot hand grenades from houses are recruited by improved networks. They often do not even know who is responsible for the underlying conflict. That could be a missing batch of cocaine, a hemp heist from previous violence. They carry out the attack purely for the money.”
It takes a lot of investigative capacity to find out about the clients. “If an executor has been caught, he has no interest in leaving Brussels because of a threat to him,” often says that there are several steps between the executor and the client.”
But even with a suspect in the picture, it does not come to a certainty. This turned out to be the case in the case of the hand grenade at the bakery in Breda. created think police and just get the file behind bars.
During the discovery of the hand grenade, DNA of two people was found, including that of the arrested suspect. But according to the court, this was not evidence. It was unclear when and how the man’s DNA ended up on the foil, the court ruled. That is why he was acquitted.
For the liquidation attempt in the same case, a 23-year-old man is up to 7 years in prison. A substantive hearing is scheduled for November for the extortion.
accountability
Omroep Brabant made an inventory of how often explosives and heavy fireworks were developed at buildings, they went off and how often houses were shot at. The police could not give exact information about this, because different are registered differently. Based on police press releases, media articles, verdicts and after Omroep Brabant on these figures.
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