Expatica news

Missing TBS patient sparks fears after kidnap

28 May 2004

AMSTERDAM — Just days after a kidnapping drama involving an escaped sex offender, the relatives of an Amsterdam cigar salesman who was shot and killed in 1993 have been alarmed by news that the convicted killer has disappeared from a TBS psychiatric detention clinic.

The murderer, identified as Mohammed B., was described in the past by psychiatrists as a “walking time bomb” and had been placed in a workshop as part of his TBS treatment. He disappeared from the workplace earlier this month.

B. was being treated by the TBS clinic, Flevo Future, in Utrecht, where the alleged kidnapper of 13-year-okld Wei Wei Hu failed to return to on 11 May after being granted provisional leave.

Wei Wei was sexually assaulted after she was abducted from the eastern Dutch town of Rekken on Sunday afternoon, but released by her kidnapper on Tuesday morning after police surrounded his vehicle in the German town of Munster.

Dutch politicians have expressed concern about TBS patients being allowed provisional leave. In response, Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner has promised to toughen up the system, possibly by electronic surveillance of TBS detainees on provisional leave.

But newspaper De Telegraaf ran a front-page report on Thursday revealing the recent disappearance of Mohammed B. who, at the age of 17, shot and killed tobacco shop owner André Hartman on 6 November 1993 in the Amsterdam East store. B. was sentenced to six years jail and TBS psychiatric detention.

Hartman’s widow was warned by Amsterdam police on Monday that the murderer of her husband had walked away from his TBS treatment 14 days ago. An Hartman said the police officers told her that the man had been added to the police telex alert system, but there was not much more they could do.

At the time of Hartman’s murder, B. had failed to return from weekend leave from the remedial educationalist centre De Marke in Rekken, where he was being detained for special treatment.

He had been sentenced to the special treatment after he stabbed a 50-year-old woman to death in Amsterdam in 1992. B. was aged 15 at the time of the offence.

“After the (police) statement, I felt so unwell that I went back to the police station yesterday,” said An Hartman, who still runs the tobacco store.

“I was sent away empty-handed. The officer said I should not worry. According to him, the chance that the culprit would come to my business for a second time was very small. And they would not actively search for him.

“I heard him say: ‘Madam, do you know how many escaped prisoners are listed on the police telex?’ I really felt brushed off.”

When newspaper De Telegraaf contacted Amsterdam police after B.’s disappearance, there were immediate denials that the murderer was on the run. “His sentence was finished a long time ago,” a police spokeswoman said.

[Copyright Expatica News 2004]

Subject: Dutch news