A terrorist seized Amsterdam’s highest building

Today is six months from the day of tragic events of September 11 in the United States of America. Was it incidental or not, but a terrorist seized the highest building in the capital of the Netherlands, Amsterdam. This building is the largest business-center in the country.

A stranger wielding a machine-gun entered the Rembrandt's Tower, as this building is called, at about 9:30 a.m. local time (11:30 a.m. Moscow time), he took several people as hostages (there are some five thousand people working in the building on weekdays). The local television company NOS informed that there could be an explosion in the high-rise building, in which there were the offices of 56 companies like Merrill Lynch, ING investment bank, Gucci. The terrorist reportedly has the explosive. The police are currently conducting negotiations with the terrorist, having encircled the building, and blocked the traffic. Eyewitnesses say that the terrorist was an elderly white man of European looks.

The terrorist rejected an offer to yield; nothing has been reported yet about the victims, or injured people, and if there were any. The criminal made his hostages hang the slogans on the windows of the building, which said: “We lie.” BBC reported that the man was protesting the production and sale of wide-screen television sets, calling them “a creative nonsense.” According to his opinion, the consumers were allegedly being forced to buy such TV-sets. RIA Novosti informed that the stranger had been sending telefaxes to the union of consumers for many years, protesting the wide-screen TV-sets.

Maybe the criminal made a terrible mistake: the company Philips, which manufactures such appliances, moved its headquarters to another building nearby. However, it is not absolutely clear, if the terrorist was setting out his protest against TV-sets only.

Sergey Yugov PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov