Killing of Mitch Henriquez
Mitch Henriquez was killed by Dutch police at a music festival in The Hague on 27 June 2015. During an altercation, he was restrained by five police officers and was choked to death. The official narrative that Henriquez had died at the hospital was immediately disputed by bystanders who had filmed the incident; the killing led to four days of rioting in The Hague and a ban on public assembly. At trial two years later, two police officers were convicted and sentenced to six months in prison. On appeal, one sentence was quashed and the other upheld. At the final court of appeal, the Supreme Court, the remaining sentence was upheld in 2021. The case has been compared to other police homicides such as the murder of George Floyd and the killing of Freddie Gray. RTL Nieuws revealed in 2021 that the Hague police force had spent €1.3 million on lawyers to defend the officers involved in the killing. Killing Aruban man Mitch Henriquez (aged 42) was on holiday in the Netherlands in the summer of 2015. On 27 June, he went to the Night at the Park music festival which was headlined by UB40 at the Zuiderpark in The