A 33-year-old man has appeared in court in The Hague charged with threatening the lives of two of the three Dutch princesses.
During the preliminary hearing, Anne Romke van der H denied via his lawyer that he wanted to kill princess Amalia and her sister Alexia. He was arrested in February after a hotel he was staying in called the police because he would not stop screaming about killing people from the balcony of his room, the AD reported.
Police found two axes with their names and “Sieg Heil” carved into the handles in his room, along with a note listing their names and the word “bloedbad” – although these were just three of the many words on the piece of paper, the public prosecutor admitted in court.
The prosecutor also said Van der H had said during a police interview that he believed he was in a romantic relationship with Amalia. The axes, he told police, were needed to go on survival training with Amalia.
His lawyer told the court that Van der H had “absolutely no intention of harming the princesses” and said “bloedbad 400” was the name of the “training mission in Poland”. He asked the court to release his client from custody so he could undergo psychiatric treatment, the AD said.
The court sided with the public prosecutor, who told the court that the suspect had been in a clinic last year and said that he was “not afraid to stab people”. He had also been spotted near the palace gardens, which was “serious enough” to merit being remanded in custody, the court said.
Van der H has also been charged with verbally insulting several police officers in different incidents.
The next pro forma hearing is on July 27.
