Amsterdam has been the scene of a bad scene from the Casa de Papel: a 27-year-old armed man took more than 70 hostages in a Apple Store and demanded 200 million euros in cryptocurrencies for his release. The running away of the last hostage put an end to the kidnapping.
The young man dressed in camouflage entered the store in the central Leidseplein square mid-followingnoon yesterday and immediately took the first customer he saw hostage at gunpoint.
Inside the building there were more than 70 people on different floors, with four hiding in a closet on the ground floor.
“They lived in fear for hours. We have organized psychological support for the victims,” Deputy Mayor Rutger Groot Wassink said.
The kidnapper, born in Amsterdam, has a criminal record related to the Weapons and Ammunition Law, and, in principle, he acted alone, with an automatic weapon, a pistol and a bomb-proof vest that during the kidnapping showed as a supposed explosive vest.
The details of kidnapping
It was the perpetrator himself who contacted the police as soon as the first officers arrived at the scene, and opened fire at least four times on them with an automatic weapon, shots that the hostages also heard.
He demanded 200 million euros in cryptocurrencies or he “immolated” himself inside, and then the negotiations began: already at night, the police managed to get several people to leave the building little by little, until counting regarding 70 people, but inside the store there was still the kidnapper and the client he was pointing the gun at.
Around midnight, the kidnapper asked for water and the police sent it with a robot to the door of the store, a moment of distraction that the hostage took advantage of to run away, but the assailant ran following him, and the two staged a fight. a race that ended when the aggressor ran over him with a DSI car. All of that was also recorded.
With the outrage, the hostage-taking had come to an end. The kidnapper was left lying on the ground, while snipers from various sides pointed at him – as the lasers of the rifles on his body show – and a robot examined him for explosives. When it was confirmed that he was not carrying bombs, an ambulance took him to hospital alive.
The agents searched two houses linked to the author of the facts and this Wednesday the investigation continues.
