THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) – Dutch police conducted mass arrests overnight, detaining about 200 people for ignoring a ban on public assembly in a neighborhood hit by late-night rioting after the death of a man in police custody.
The arrests late Thursday and early Friday capped four nights of rioting in a predominantly immigrant neighborhood in The Hague – a situation that has drawn comparisons with the angry protests that erupted in the United States following deaths of black men at the hands of white police officers.
Hague Mayor Jozias van Aartsen, however, has strongly rejected such comparisons.
“There is absolutely nothing in common between the work of American police forces and the Dutch police and the Hague force,” he told national broadcaster NOS this week.
Prosecutors investigating Sunday’s death of Mitch Henriquez, a 42-year-old from the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba, say he likely died of oxygen starvation caused during his arrest at a music festival Saturday night. The five officers involved have been suspended from active duty and are being investigated as suspects in his death.