According to a secret memo published by the newspaper De Volkskrant last weekend, the Moluccan train hijackers were killed by a hail of bullets when Marines stormed the train. It seems that the hijackers were liquidated and had no chance to survive the storming of the train. Nine Moluccan youngsters hijacked the train to demand the independency of the Moluccan State, a promise the Dutch made 25 years earlier.

Over the last years policemen and Mariner’s have come out with more information about the violent raid. One of them states that before the storming of the hijacked train the order was given to take care that the leaders of the Moluccan group and a young Moluccan woman were not allowed to leave the train alive.

In two weeks the results of a so-called archive research will be published by the ministry of Justice after several MP’s repeatedly requested more research after more and more facts came out over the last years. Although a book is published and a movie has been produced about the train hijack, the Dutch authorities never have started an official investigation after the fatal storming of the train.

The famous lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld has taken on the case. She has successfully defended victims of military operations in the former Dutch colony Indonesia and the Women of Srebrenica. According to Zegveld the hijackers that survived the storming of the train should have been arrested. Instead they were shot in the head and in the heart while they were already wounded and taken out. It also came out that illegal Dumdum bullets were used.