Dutch detectives admit they are struggling to cope with a rash of drugs-related explosions – more than 300 so far this year – in a new urban phenomenon where teenagers are tasked using social media to carry out the attacks, frequently without knowing on whom or why.
The drugs underworld has always used violence to sanction and threaten, but in the Netherlands old-fashioned shootings are now being replaced by bombings because they are a cheaper option given the ready availability of youngsters eager to earn their gangland spurs.
The latest figures from the police show not just a rapid rate of increase but a number of telling new trends: particularly that more of the explosives are home-made – which is not unrelated to the fact that the bombers are becoming younger and younger.
There were 323 bombings in total nationwide during 2022. There have already been more than 300 so far this year. The expectation, say officers in the violent crimes unit, is that the 2022 figure will at least double by the end of this year.
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Rotterdam, known for its vicious gangland scene, had 96 bombings by the start of July. That’s 31 more than in the first six months of 2002. In The Hague there were 26 compared to 15 last year. There are currently no statistics that extract bombings from other violent crime in Amsterdam.
Of the 72 arrests made in Rotterdam this year in connection with explosions, more than half the suspects were aged 23 or younger, a quarter of them were minors – and the youngest was just 14 years old, says Wim Hoek, district chief of police in Rotterdam.
They receive their orders mainly through social media, particularly via Snapchat or Telegram, he says. Intermediaries are rarely used any more, replaced by technology.
A large proportion of the homemade explosives use “flash powder” – used in missile decoy flares and military-grade stun grenades – which can tear an iron postbox into razor-sharp fragments. “It’s a miracle nobody has been killed in these attacks”, says Hoek.
Most of the time the attackers are given a location, a house, a business, or even a car number rather than details of an individual. That makes the attack seem more anonymous, unlike the up-close shootings of investigative journalist Peter R de Vries in 2021 or lawyer Derk Wiersum in 2019.
Occasionally the attacks are on businesses, for instance the series of six bomb attacks in a week on a company operating bureaux de change outlets in Amsterdam and The Hague – which was later investigated as a suspected money laundering front for cocaine smuggling.
“The problem for the police is that when these youngsters who carry out these attacks are picked up there is very little they can tell us because they know little or nothing. That’s exactly the way their paymasters want it.”
This is a problem that’s in its infancy. It requires government intervention, say police, to support education in deprived areas and to prevent the exploitation of vulnerable children by criminal gangs. If it’s not tackled, they say, it will worsen.
