Arrests and Conviction
On April 11, 1988 the police arrested 8 people they thought to be behind the RaRa bombings. Another person surrendered shortly thereafter, and a tenth suspect was arrested in May 1986. Only one of the suspects was prosecuted and tried, René Roemersma. He was convicted on four of seven charges, the most serious of which was arson, for his part in two 1986 attacks on Dutch wholesale traders, a January attack on a Dutch passport printer, and the sabotage of a Shell station in Nieuwegein. He was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment. A higher court subsequently changed the verdict to a sentence of 18 months imprisonment because some evidence was illegally obtained as the public persecutor during a search of seven properties had been temporarily absent. The others arrested at the same time as Roemersma were released for lack of evidence.
When Roemersma was sentenced, roughly 100 sympathizers protested outside the Amsterdam High Court, where they threw stones at the windows of the court.
Read more about this topic: Ra Ra
Famous quotes containing the words arrests and/or conviction:
“On our streets it is the sight of a totally unknown face or figure which arrests the attention, rather than, as in big cities, the strangeness of occasionally seeing someone you know.”
—For the State of Vermont, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“What does headquarters think these guys came over here for, a sewing circle? They go up playing for keeps. Cops and robbers with rocks in the snowballs. Brass knuckles and lead pipes and a roughneck conviction they can lick any man in the world.”
—Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976)