Forty years after the 'Rijswijk Megrobes' there is a monument for the victims

On a bridge on the Verrijn Stuartlaan in Rijswijk, a monument was unveiled on Saturday afternoon in memory of the victims of what the Rijswijk mistaken murders have been called. In the office building you have a view from the bridge, forty years ago, in the night of 7 to 8 March 1985, five people in their twenties were shot after a band rehearsal. Willem van Putten, Albert Kneefel and Fred Bakker died, Jelle de Beer and Cisco Elenbaas were seriously injured.

The attack was never clarified, but it soon became clear that the band members were not the target of the attack. It was intended for members of the Liberation Council for Suriname, consisting of Surinamese who fled to the Netherlands after the December murders of 1982. From the same office building in Rijswijk, they led the Desi Bouterse regime.

Everything that has to do with this case soon got the stamp 'secret'

From research by the NRC podcast The Secret of Rijswijk (2021) It turned out that everything that has to do with this case soon got the stamp 'secret', both at the police and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The matter would be too sensitive politically. And so it remained silent for almost forty years.

Willem van der Ende, deputy mayor of Rijswijk in 1985, remembers that he was called out of bed on the night of 7 to 8 March 1985. Upon arrival at Verrijn Stuartlaan, the bodies of the victims were still there. « The police commissioner said to me that night: I think the BVD (the Interior Security Service) is coming here tomorrow and takes everything with us, and that we are being kept out of it. And that was true, « he said on Saturday afternoon.

The police did investigate at the time. Everything pointed in the direction of Bouterse as a client for the attack, in which the Surinamese embassy in The Hague and the consulate in Amsterdam played an important role in its preparation. It never came to prosecution or trial of suspects.

Recognition

Dozens of family members, friends and (former) colleagues of the victims were in Rijswijk at the unveiling of the monument. The ambassador of Suriname was also present. For the relatives and survivors, the monument is the first form of recognition for what happened.

« It's healing, » says Yvonne Oberweis. She was engaged in 1985 with Albert 'Ab' Kneefel. They would get married shortly after the attack. « At the time, my life was mainly about survival, and then I stopped it a bit. But now that I am here, many different images come together again. The cheerful, nice young man who was Albert, but also how he came down after he had been shot, « she says, pointing in the direction of the office building. Albert died shortly after he had managed to talk to a security guard about what had happened inside.

The Rijswijk mayor Huri Sahin unveiled the monument, consisting of two placards that protrude over the water from the railing, with the names of the victims on it. « It is very important that this monument is there now, » she says. « That people who pass by see the names and know what happened here. And hopefully this monument will help the relatives in bearing the loss. « 

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