Netherlands: Football fans arrested for anti-Semitism

Supporters of Dutch club AZ Alkmaar in April 2009 (Illustration image). © Robin VAN LONKHUIJSEN / ANP / AFP

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2 min

154 football fans were arrested in Amsterdam for singing anti-Semitic chants before a match. Alkmaar fans targeted Ajax Amsterdam, which is often associated with the city's Jewish community, not least because some of its managers and players from the 1960s and 1970s were Jewish. This is not the first time that anti-Semitic incidents have occurred on the sidelines of Dutch football matches and this incident comes 48 hours after the annual day of remembrance on May 4 for the victims of the Second World War in the Netherlands.

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With our regional correspondent, Pierre Bénazet

On match nights, the police are present in each of the cars of the metro line 54 that serves the Amsterdam Arena. At 21pm this Saturday, Ajax were playing at home against AZ, Alkmaar Zaanstreek, the only other club in the province of North Holland to play in the Eredivisie or Division d'Honneur, the highest step of the football championship in the Netherlands.

Two hours before the match, AZ fans began flocking to the Arena in southern Amsterdam. On several occasions, the police in the cars ordered them to stop their anti-Semitic chants. At 19:30 p.m., they stopped the metro train at Strandvliet, the station before Bijlmer ArenA where you have to get off to go to the stadium. 154 supporters spent the night in cells, but not before smashing the windows of one of the buses that was taking them to the police station. On social networks, the group "Voetbal Ultras", club of AZ supporters, displays photos of the destroyed windows.

Arrests hailed by Jewish community

The Central Jewish Presbytery of the Netherlands expresses its satisfaction at seeing the authorities "tackle anti-Semitism head-on". The consistory had already had to file a complaint in April for an anti-Semitic incident at De Kuip, the Feyenoord stadium in Rotterdam.

► Read also: In Italy, the Belgian footballer Romelu Lukaku targets racist shouts in Turin

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  • Netherlands
  • Football
  • Racism