Footballers sentenced for linesman’s fatal beating

SIX teenage footballers and a player’s father have been found guilty in the Netherlands of beating an amateur linesman to death, an incident that shocked the nation and prompted soul-searching over football violence and race.

Linesman Richard Nieuwenhuizen, 41, was attacked by the football players – mostly of Moroccan origin – while he was officiating at an under-17 match at Almere, near Amsterdam last December.

Mr Nieuwenhuizen was kicked repeatedly by the players, who were 15 and 16 at the time, and the adult, who had been on the sidelines. The linesman collapsed hours after the match and was taken to hospital, where he went into a coma. He died the following day.

The incident was seized upon by the anti-Muslim party of Geert Wilders, who said the death was “not a football problem, but a Moroccan problem”.

Judges in Lelystad yesterday sentenced the 50-year-old father, identified only as El-Hasan D, to six years in prison.

Five teenaged players were given two-year sentences in youth detention for their roles in the attack and another was sentenced to a year.

A seventh player, aged 15, was sentenced to 30 days’ detention for assault.

All the defendants had insisted they were innocent. They have two weeks to appeal. Their lawyers had argued that Mr Nieuwenhuizen had an underlying medical condition that contributed to his death, but Dutch forensic experts said he died as a result of the beating.

Judges said the young players acted together in the fatal beating, and handed down the highest sentences available.

A court statement said: “The seriousness of the event, the lack of a clear reason for it, the terrible consequences, the fact that they haven’t accepted responsibility for their acts and the enormous shock it caused throughout society and the entire football world meant that the minors received the maximum possible sentence.”

The fatal attack took place on 2 December last year in Almere, after the home team, Buitenboys, drew 2-2 with Nieuw Sloten, which is based in a mostly immigrant district of Amsterdam.

Mr Nieuwenhuizen was a volunteer linesman, officiating in a match that his son was playing in. He initially seemed to recover and shrugged off questions about whether he would file a complaint about the incident, but he later collapsed.

The Netherlands’ National Forensics Institute concluded that he was killed as a result of injuries sustained during the attack by the footballers.

In a statement, the court said the father had received a heavy punishment because “instead of setting a good example to the youths by criticising their behaviour, he joined them in kicking and beating the linesman and has never accepted responsibility” for his actions.

Mr Nieuwenhuizen’s death triggered a bout of soul-searching in the football world in the Netherlands and beyond about the loss of respect for sports officials among youth players.

“You can’t imagine it happening,” said Ajax coach Frank de Boer. “That boys of 15, 16 years short circuit like that. You wonder about the parenting.”

More than 12,000 people attended a silent march for Nieuwenhuizen in Almere on 9 December.

“What can I do to teach today’s football youth the difference between anger and aggression?” said national football association chairman Michael van Praag at a ceremony afterwards. “Football is emotion, but it’s also winning and losing. You have to be able to do both, otherwise you don’t fit in our sport.”

Mr Nieuwenhuizen’s three sons said yesterday that they hoped the convictions would send a message around the world that such attacks should not be tolerated in sport.