Legendary dutch crime reporter Peter R de Vries has died in hospital after he was shot in Amsterdam last week.
The 64-year-old was shot five times on the street in broad daylight last Tuesday, July 6th.
The attack happened in the centre of the capital city, shortly after Mr de Vries left the studios of RTL Television where he had just finished recording an interview.
He had long been considered a possible target of the criminals he reported on but no clear motive for the attack has been established as yet.
Confirming that he had died from his injuries in hospital today, his family said in a statement to RTL: "Peter fought until the end, but he has lost the battle."
The journalist had become a celebrity in his home country thanks to his fearless investigative reporting and frequent television appearances.
The Netherlands’ caretaker prime minister Mark Rutte last week called the shooting “shocking and incomprehensible”.
He said: “An attack on a courageous journalist and also an attack on the free journalism that is so essential for our democracy, our constitutional state, our society.”
The Netherlands King Willem-Alexander also condemned the shooting as an attack on democracy that had shocked him deeply.
"This is an attack on journalism, a cornerstone of our rule of law", King Willem-Alexander told reporters during a state visit to Berlin," he said.
"And as such it is an attack on our constitutional order."
Mr de Vries began as a newspaper crime reporter and became known for his 1987 book "The Heineken Kidnapping" reconstructing the abduction of beer magnate Freddy Heineken.
Kidnapper Willem Holleeder was convicted in 2014 for threatening De Vries, who helped the police solve cases for which Holleeder was ultimately sentenced to life in prison.
He had recently been acting as an adviser and confidant to a witness in a major trial of the alleged leader of a crime gang police described as an “oiled killing machine”.
The suspected gangland leader, Ridouan Taghi, was extradited to the Netherlands from Dubai in 2019.
He is currently in jail while he stands trial along with 16 other suspects.
