Authorities have released details of the 62 people arrested after violent attacks took place around the football match between Amsterdam’s Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv on Thursday night.
Violence after the game – described by the Amsterdam mayor, Femke Halsema, as “hit and run attacks” on Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters by “boys on scooters” – provoked international horror.
The Dutch prime minister, Dick Schoof, was among those who condemned what he called “antisemitic violence against Israelis”, while the US president, Joe Biden, called the attacks “despicable” and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, compared the incident to Kristallnacht, the state-sanctioned pogrom in Nazi Germany in 1938 in which an estimated 91 Jews were murdered.
Amsterdam’s police chief, Peter Holla, said there had been “incidents on both sides”, starting on Wednesday night when Maccabi fans tore down a Palestinian flag from the facade of a building in the city centre, shouted “fuck you Palestine” and destroyed a taxi.
The Dutch public prosecution has confirmed that 62 people were arrested on Thursday. These arrests were made before and during the Ajax game, which began at 8pm local time. Geert Wilders, the head of the far-right Party for Freedom, whose party is part of the Dutch government coalition, said he was “speechless” that no arrests appeared to have been made after the match.
Halsema and the heads of the Dutch police and prosecution said at a press conference on Friday that violence by “rioters and criminals” aimed at some of the 2,600 “Jewish Israeli visitors” had left five people in hospital and 20 to 30 with minor injuries. There were reports of fireworks set off, people being thrown into canals and some Maccabi supporters being asked for identity documents in order to be allowed back to their hotels.
According to the prosecution service, there are four suspects still in custody, including two under-18s, “suspected of having used open violence during the riots last Thursday” and due before the magistrate this week. Of the 62 arrested, “around 40” are suspected of public disorder and were fined and released.
Ten were suspected of insult, vandalism or possession of illegal fireworks and have been released but are still suspects. Of another 10, four have been fined for minor offences including insult, resisting police, not showing ID and two charges were dismissed owing to lack of evidence. One case is under investigation and three people are charged with assault against an “unknown person” or police.
On Saturday, a 26-year-old man, identified from video images, was arrested on suspicion of assault at the major Spui crossroads on Thursday. Police have meanwhile made a public call for images and called anyone involved to turn themselves in.
The Dutch capital and nearby suburb of Amstelveen are in an official state of emergency. Demonstrations are banned, security has been stepped up at Jewish buildings and the police have extra rights to stop and search.
A pro-Palestinian march was broken up because of the ban on Sunday. Hundreds of demonstrators defied the prohibition to gather in the Dutch capital’s Dam square, chanting demands for an end to violence in Gaza and “Free Palestine”, before police moved in.
The local police chief Olivier Dutilh told the court on Sunday that the ban was still needed as antisemitic incidents were also said to be taking place on Saturday night, local TV station AT5 reported.
Protest organisers said in a message on Instagram that they were outraged by the “framing” of unrest around the match as antisemitic and called the protest ban draconian. “We refuse to let the charge of antisemitism be weaponised to suppress Palestinian resistance,” they said.
On Friday and Saturday, a large police presence was evident, with riot police vans riding in convoy and parked by hotels and on Dam square – a site often used for demonstrations. Extra flights took Israeli visitors home, with some saying that they had employed local networks for lifts instead of taxis.
The swift and fierce condemnation from the Dutch government comes amid increased scrutiny about the role of the country’s authorities during the second world war. Three-quarters of the Netherlands’ Jewish population – many from Amsterdam – were murdered by the Nazis: the worst record in western Europe. The city tram and Dutch train services charged the Nazis for transports of Jewish people on the way to death camps. An official research project into the complicity of Amsterdam authorities during the occupation is expected to be published shortly.
On Saturday evening, the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Jewish anti-Zionist organisation Erev Rav and the Platform Stop Racisme en Fascisme organised a press conference at a memorial to the resistance of Jewish citizens killed from 1940 to 1945. There, the chair of Erev Rav, Yuval Gal, alleged that the Maccabi fans’ aggression had not been taken seriously enough by Dutch police.
In the press conference on Friday, Holla said that events on Wednesday night preceded the violence on Thursday. “Maccabi supporters took a flag from a building and destroyed a taxi, and on Dam square, the Palestinian flag was set alight,” he said. He said a confrontation with taxi drivers, who appeared to have been called online to mobilise and gathered at the Holland Casino, where there were 400 Israeli supporters, was defused.
A social media video verified by Reuters showed Maccabi fans setting off flares and chanting “olé, olé, let the IDF win, we will fuck the Arabs,” referring to the Israel Defense Forces. The police chief said a large crowd of Maccabi supporters had then gathered on Dam square on Thursday lunchtime and there had been “fights on both sides”.
Halsema added: “Our commissioner described what happened on Thursday, Wednesday night, before everything erupted. But I want to make clear. We are [aware] in Amsterdam that there can be tensions. There are many demonstrations and protests … And, of course, they are related to the situation in the Middle East and the ongoing war in Israel and Palestine. But what happened [on Thursday] night is not a protest. It has nothing to do with protest or demonstration. It was crime.”
Reuters contributed to this report