Dutch police trace online call for violence to 16-year-old

Dutch police traced one online call for violence ahead of last weekend’s Gen Z protests to a 16-year-old boy in the country’s south-west, a police leadership spokesperson told ANP. The boy had posted a call for violence under his full name, the spokesperson said.

Police investigate online calls for violence, but such posts are usually difficult to trace to individuals, the spokesperson said. Officers cannot simply monitor private groups, and flyers circulating online are often AI-generated, making their origin hard to establish. Police suspected that one flyer in German had been translated from Dutch.

Ahead of the protests, police focused mainly on prevention, the spokesperson said. Officers held many preventive conversations with young people and also spoke with schools and parents.