Killing of Mitch Henriquez
Mitch Henriquez was killed by Dutch police at a music festival in The Hague on 27 June 2015. During an altercation, he was restrained by five police officers and was choked to death. The official narrative that Henriquez had died at the hospital was immediately disputed by bystanders who had filmed the incident; the killing led to four days of rioting in The Hague and a ban on public assembly. At trial two years later, two police officers were convicted and sentenced to six months in prison. On appeal, one sentence was quashed and the other upheld. At the final court of appeal, the Supreme Court, the remaining sentence was upheld in 2021. The case has been compared to other police homicides such as the murder of George Floyd and the killing of Freddie Gray. RTL Nieuws revealed in 2021 that the Hague police force had spent €1.3 million on lawyers to defend the officers involved in the killing. Killing Aruban man Mitch Henriquez (aged 42) was on holiday in the Netherlands in the summer of 2015. On 27 June, he went to the Night at the Park music festival which was headlined by UB40 at the Zuiderpark in The Hague. He died after being arrested by five police officers, who choked him until he was dead. On the police account, Henriquez had told the officers he had a weapon, then pointed at his crotch; officers went to arrest him on suspicion of being armed, he resisted arrest and became unwell as he was being transported to the police station. This narrative was immediately contested by footage filmed by concerned bystanders which showed the police picking up Henriquez's unresponsive body and placing it in a van. Immediate aftermath Henriquez was killed on Sunday and footage of his death immediately began to circulate on social media, with #mitchhenriquez becoming the top Dutch language hashtag on Twitter. On Monday night, people gathered outside a police station in the inner-city district of Schilderswijk to protest, resulting in 61 arrests after three days of riots. On the fourth night, the police announced a ban on the public assembly of more than three people, with use of weapons and scooters prohibited. Officers then arrested 200 people that evening when further riots broke out, for breaching the order. Chief Public Prosecutor Kitty Nooy claimed that Henriquez had died in hospital. She said according to the autopsy Henriquez had died of asphyxiation, as result of being choked; there were no natural causes of death and Henriquez's body did not contain alcohol or drugs. Five police officers were then suspended and put under investigation. Paul van Musscher, Chief of the Hague police force, said "it really went wrong". On the Caribbean island of Aruba (a constituent country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands) the killing received much coverage in the media. Ronald Plasterk, the Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations spoke to Mike Eman, the Prime Minister of Aruba, to assure him that a full investigation would