A court on Wednesday found six of the nine men guilty on various charges after a three-year trial. The three main suspects were not sentenced to life imprisonment, but instead two people were sentenced to 28 years in prison and one person was sentenced to 26 years in prison. A seventh man was also sentenced to just four weeks in prison for drug possession. The remaining two were acquitted.
The court said it could not prove that De Vries was murdered because of his involvement in the murder trial, and rejected prosecutors’ argument that the two men who filmed the attack and posted it online had terroristic motives.
But the court found it “surprisingly” easy to condemn the killers’ ambush and shooting of De Vries and called their actions “disgusting”.
“They are not responsible for their actions,” the judge added.
The brutal killing shocked Dutch society, with King Willem-Alexander, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Prime Minister Mark Rutte condemning it as “an attack on free journalism essential to democracy.”
De Vries is a Dutch celebrity who hosted her own TV show covering high-profile criminal cases from 1995 to 2012. Thousands of mourners lined up for hours to pay their respects at his public memorial.
