Roel van Duijn

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Roel van Duijn (born the Hague, 20 January 1943) is an activist and long standing politician in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Currently he represents Groenlinks in Amsterdam. Previously he has represented Provo (Kabouters), PPR, De Groenen and Amsterdam Anders/De Groenen. He was one of the founders of the Provo movement. He has also been fraction assistant of De Groenen for the European parliament.

[edit] Terrorism and kidnapping

In 1975, when there had been an unsuccessful attempt to bomb a metro station, he was the only one who didn't sign a declaration accusing the protesters at the Nieuwmarkt, who opposed the demolition of the neighbourhood for the metro and a highway through the centre of Amsterdam. To the police it was already clear that the bombers were not left wing and therefore probably not associated with the anti-metro activism. The city council and mayor, however, immediately made the link and van Duijn was the only one who said that it should be investigated further first. After it became clear that the anti-Metro activistst were not responsible mayor Ivo Samkalden declared that they had however created a situation in which something like this could happen, thus indirectly still putting the blame on them, which only fed the anger among the protesters.

The purpose of the bombing was exactly this; that the blame would be put on 'that leftwing scum' ("dat linkse tuig"), in the words of Johannes Baank, one of the bombers. Baank got 4 months prison (but was released after 3 months). Baank had some time before taken part in a kidnapping of van Duijn "to teach him a lesson". A release sum was demanded 'for form', but van Duijn was dumped in Belgium unharmed.