“It’s terrible, it’s ridiculous. Understanding this action is absolutely out of the question.” The residents of the Spijkerkwartier district in Arnhem have no good word to say about the ‘pedo hunt’ of young people on their neighbors who were severely mistreated at the end of October and then died in hospital.
Yesterday it was announced that the 73-year-old man was the victim of a pedo hunt. “That news does not change our feelings. It is still the case that a local resident has been murdered. That is the feeling that predominates”, says local resident Maarten van Loon.
According to the Public Prosecution Service, the man has been set up. The OM says that he has made an appointment to have sex with a minor. It is not clear whether he knew it was a 15-year-old boy.
Own judge
It made a big impression in the neighborhood. After the incident, the victim was commemorated with two minutes of silence and money was collected for flowers and wreaths. Mayor Ahmed Marcouch was also present at the commemoration.
The local residents believe that the perpetrators have gone too far. “This is unacceptable. Those guys should have chosen a different path. What that man did is not right either. But it is wrong to solve it in such a way,” says Van Loon. Addi: “The moment we play in our own courts, it will be a great chaos in the world. We absolutely shouldn’t have that.”
Complotdenkers
Pedo hunters are increasingly making themselves known. Groups pretend to be minors in chat programs and in that capacity meet up with an adult with pedophile feelings. At the OM there are ample from the past months 250 incidents known involving pedo hunters.
According to experts, this is a growing movement on social media, which is partly caused by conspiracy thinkers from the United States and is now blowing over to the Netherlands.
The rumor that it would also be a pedo hunt in Arnhem had been going on for some time. The police did not want to say anything about that until yesterday. Lawyer Jamil Roethof, who assists a 15-year-old suspect, said earlier that the meeting of the boys with the man took place “by chance”. But the term pedo hunting is not appropriate according to him.
Police do too little
The question that prevails among some residents in the neighborhood is how it got this far. According to Addi and Mo, two boys who live opposite the site of the incident, the police are doing too little to stop the pedo hunt. “We had to wait for it to go wrong. This is what those pedo hunters do. Seek people out, lure and beat them up. Did you help anyone with that? I don’t think so.”
Police have arrested seven young people in this case.
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