Jokingly or experimentally announcing a bombing or massacre via Twitter: police and law enforcement often find it anything but laughable.
The threat tweet by @Aarono43 is not an isolated incident. Over the past year, police intervened several times after several individuals hurled similar messages into the world. Because of the incidents and the arraignments afterwards, case law is emerging, giving judges more guidance and the legal boundary is slowly taking shape.
Recently, politician Femke Halsema was threatened via Twitter. The tweet suggested that the man who wrote it wanted to harm Halsema's little daughter. The judge sentenced him to 17 days in jail and 80 hours of community service. A 17-year-old boy who announced a similar shooting incident as inAlphen aan denRijn via the Internet platform went to jail for 12 days and in Hilversum a 13-year-old child was recently arrested. In De Wereld Draait Door a few months ago, 17-year-old Charlotte appeared who "as an experiment" announced a bombing via Twitter. She was highly indignant that the incident received so much attention. In the case against Halsema's threatener, the judge ruled that a threatening tweet is the same as threatening someone offline. In that case, one can leaf to Article 285 of the Penal Code. For the police it is difficult to assess threatening tweets.Often they balance on the edge: is it a misplaced joke, an expression of frustration or really a serious matter after all? Police spokeswoman Renske Hamming is clear: "If you call out at Schiphol Airport that you're carrying a bomb, that's not taken as a joke either. You decide what you put on the internet, what you throw into the ether. You have to think about that in advance."
Hamming cannot say what will now happen to the 17-year-old student from Meerssen. "That is discussed in the Youth Case Consultation. In it, the Public Prosecutor's Office, the police, Youth Care Bureau and the Child Protection Council jointly determine what punishment is appropriate for minor suspects. This also takes into account school performance."
Alex Brenninkmeijer, the National Ombudsman, recently opposed possible harsh sentencing: "Keep in mind that children are children and can do very strange things unexpectedly."
