Dutch-trained Afghan police may have to fight Taliban rebels after all and a rhino without horns graces a museum wall. A Dutch glamour girl is accused of lying after ‘backing the wrong horse’ and there are hockey winners and losers. It’s all in the Dutch dailies.

Dutch-trained Afghan police ‘to fight’
The front pages are mostly about New York’s battle with hurricane Irene. Domestic news does get a look-in, but the papers don’t agree on what should be top of the bill.

On an inside page, AD mentions that Afghan police officers trained by the Dutch are going to be used to fight the Taliban after all. In order to get parliament’s approval for the police training mission in Afghanistan’s Kunduz province, the government had to promise opposition MPs that the Afghan officers being trained would not be used in combat situations with the Taliban.

Now, says AD, Kunduz’ police chief has told the RTL news station that the new officers are very probably going to find themselves fighting the rebels. He sees this as self-defence, saying there are bound to be situations where ordinary officers will have to engage the rebels until special anti-terrorist units can be deployed.

De Volkskrant gives the story more prominent coverage, explaining that the restoration of public order is a normal civilian police duty which can have a wide definition. In Afghanistan, the paper goes on, this could for example include fighting suicide bombers who are threatening a hotel used by Westerners.

“If there’s a robbery in the Netherlands where shots are fired, the army’s not immediately called out - the police deal with it,” the commander of the Dutch training mission explains.

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Hornless rhino on display
Another story picked up by the papers is the theft from Rotterdam’s Natural History Museum of the horns from a rhinoceros head which was on display nine metres up on a wall.

The masked thieves only needed five minutes – and a ladder -, says de Volkskrant, for their “hit and run” job last night. They were caught on security cameras after smashing in the building’s front door, but had got away by the time the police arrived.

De Telegraaf explains that rhino horns fetch hundreds of thousands of euros on the black market. The museum had been warned by Interpol, it goes on, that an international gang has been carrying out similar robberies in museums around the world but was unwilling to hide one of its highlights away in a vault.

The museum director explains that the rhino was a favourite of visitors and figured prominently in museum treasure-hunts for children. The rhino head, robbed of its horns, is staying on display “with the whole story next to it”, he tells the paper.

Backing the wrong horse
Under its font-page photograph of an empty, sodden New York, AD runs a brief piece informing us that Talitha van Zon, the former Playboy pin-up is safe. Her story has been reported on and off in the papers over the past week. The Dutch model has now managed to get out of war-torn Libya and is thought to be in Malta.

The 39-year-old has told her story to British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph. She was invited to Libya by her friend Muammar Gaddafi’s son Mutassim. “The biggest mistake I ever made was to go to Libya in the middle of a war,” she admits.

She says rebels took over the hotel where she was staying and threatened her. In her panic, she jumped from a balcony, breaking her arm. Hotel staff managed to get her to hospital and she was eventually able to leave the country.

De Telegraaf is, however, having none of it: “Gaddafi’s sweetheart is lying”, screams its headline. It says she jumped because she was threatened not by rebels but by African mercenaries hired by Gaddafi himself.

The paper says it got to the truth because it was present at discussions between the British M16 intelligence service and advisers from the USA's state department. “This glamour girl suddenly realised she’d been backing the wrong horse,” it quotes one of the British agents as saying.

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A tale of two sides
“No competition in Europe” reads a headline in the sports section of today’s nrc.next. The Netherlands women’s hockey team has won its eighth European Championships title. The players only need to keep their heads and they can beat all comers, thinks the paper with an eye on the Olympic Games.

And it’s their second major victory in as many months: at the beginning of July, they won the Hockey Champions Trophy held in Amstelveen. Trainer Max Caldas is proud of his team which “has killed the myth that you can’t peak twice in six weeks”.

Trouw manages to find room on its front page for the hockey story, but strangely chooses to begin with news of defeat. The Netherlands men’s side lost 2-4 to Germany in their European Championships final.

It says the Dutch men lacked the focus they displayed in earlier matches. The disappointment was made all the more bitter because the side had beaten the Germans the last four times they had met.