Dramatic new developments in gangland killing. Van Gogh goes from suicide to murder victim. Major job losses at Philips. Support for Occupy Amsterdam protest. Amsterdam police love their job a little too much. 

Arrests breathe new life into gangland killing case
Organised crime is hitting the headlines today in more ways than one. All today’s papers report on the arrest of three suspects – one Russian and two Turks – in connection with the 2004 gangland killing of Willem Endstra, a property baron with links to the underworld.

De Telegraaf reports that “no champagne corks were popping ... but there was definitely a mood of celebration at Amsterdam police HQ” now a DNA match appears to have broken open a case that had been all but closed for years.

It’s not only the arrests that have police pulses racing but the tantalising prospect that the burning question in the crime dossier will finally be answered: “who ordered this and other Amsterdam underworld killings?” While conceding that the newly arrested suspects may spill the beans, the crime reporters at nrc.next aren’t holding their breath, pointing out that many likely candidates have themselves been ‘bumped off’ in the meantime.

One man often associated with Endstra’s death is Willem Holleeder, convicted for his part in the kidnapping of beer tycoon Freddy Heineken back in 1983. A high-profile film about the kidnapping had its star-studded premiere last night.

De Telegraaf features pictures galore from the red carpet, but also reports that the production may not reach cinemas: Holleeder is trying to obtain an injunction banning the film unless all scenes featuring a character based on him are removed. He insists the depiction would jeopardise his “reintegration into society” at the end of the nine-year sentence he is currently serving for extortion.

Van Gogh recast as manic manipulator and murder victim
A startling take on the life of one of the Netherlands’ most famous sons makes all the papers today. A new biography of Vincent van Gogh by Pulitzer Prize winning authors Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith argues that the artist did not take his own life but was gunned down in a conflict with two French teenagers.

On its front page nrc.next reconstructs the painter’s famous Room at Arles as a crime scene, complete with police tape and a chalk drawing of a body on the floor.

Under the headline “Will the real Vincent van Gogh please stand up?” the paper reveals that the book debunks the myth that Van Gogh was “a lost soul in a corrupt world”, showing him instead to be a “manic manipulator and a tyrant”. The authors argue that this is far from a character assassination but in fact makes the painter a “less perfect” but “more moving character”.

Ultimately, nrc.next reckons the book has the power to change our perceptions of Vincent van Gogh, not by reimagining his death but by the way it “sheds new light on his desperate life”.

Philips' workforce hit by major job cuts
All today’s papers bemoan the loss of 4,500 jobs at global Dutch electronics giant and national institution Philips. It’s front page news in AD, which reports that 1,400 of the redundancies will fall in the Netherlands, representing 10 percent of the company’s Dutch workforce.

De Telegraaf captures the mood of uncertainty among the company’s employees with a quote from one worker: “we’re getting smaller and smaller and it seems like we no longer have any control over what’s happening ... where will all this end?”

The paper believes that such concerns are justified, forecasting that “this reorganization is only the beginning” and observing that “a wave of redundancies is flooding the Netherlands”.

Occupy Amsterdam: small-scale but serious
Amsterdam has joined the list of cities worldwide to follow in the footsteps of the US Occupy Wall Street protests. NRC Handelsblad reports that Saturday’s Occupy Amsterdam protest brought 1,500 demonstrators to the square outside the city’s stock exchange, a number of whom are still camping there.
The paper’s headline points out the rather vague nature of the activism: “Occupy Beurs Square: demonstrate against ... er ... uhm ... what was it again?” But its editorial suggests that the protests shouldn’t be taken lightly: “People are worried and they have good reason to be. The demonstrations should therefore be taken more seriously than their small scale initially suggests.”

The protests also attract support from a fairly unlikely source: De Telegraaf’s readers aren’t exactly renowned for their anti-establishment attitudes but a poll conducted by the mass circulation newspaper reveals that 75 percent of its readership support the protest and see it as a legitimate statement against the “culture of greed” in the banking world.

Police pickpocket triumph turns to embarrassment
De Telegraaf and de Volkskrant pick up on the story that police in Amsterdam got a little carried away with themselves recently. Such was their enthusiasm at arresting their 1,000th pickpocket of the year that they triumphantly slapped a self-made sign with the number 1,000 on her back, before the eyes of hundreds of onlookers at the city’s main railway station.

In De Telegraaf the boys and girls in blue admit they went too far: “This was highly inappropriate and unprofessional ... the team acted out of euphoria but needless to say they have since received a rap on the knuckles.” No lap of honour next time then...