Fresh agony for mum as migrant who mowed down daughter, 14, is freed… and riddle over body ‘left in a ditch like animal’

HORRIFIED by the “injustice” she was hearing, Trijntje Boes hurried out of the courtroom – after coming face to face with the migrant who mowed down and killed her beloved teenage daughter Tamar. Last week, asylum seeker Jamal T. – who was behind the wheel when Tamar, 14, died in a hit-and-run in the Netherlands – walked free. But for the Dutch teen’s devastated family, unanswered questions still plague the case. Teenager Tamar was killed in a hit-and-run in the Netherlands in 2020 Credit: Supplied Trijntje Boes, left, has been fighting for justice for her daughter for six years Credit: Supplied Why was the Dutch teen’s body found in a ditch? Why were her arms and legs stretched out straight? And if she had rolled into the ditch after being hit – why had the grass not been flattened? Tragic Tamar left her house at 1am, on July 25, 2020, after a row with her parents over late night use of her laptop. The sporty teen was struggling with lockdown and, when Trijntje turned the Wifi off so she couldn’t spend all night on TikTok and other sites, Tamar snuck out. “Tamar hoped to be an air stew­ard­ess. She loved sport, she was very act­ive and always wanted to be busy,” Trijntje said. “The Covid lock­down meant she could not go to school from 8am to 4pm as nor­mal” . Her frantic parents heard the front door close and immediately went out looking for her but tragically, they didn’t find her. Tamar was three miles from home when a car ploughed into her – leaving her for dead. Trijntje believes she may have been sitting at the side of the road hoping her dad, who was out looking for her, would pick her up. Police discovered Tamar’s body at 4am on the verge of a ditch between Marken and Monnickendam, north of Amsterdam. Shockingly, at the start of the investigation in 2020, Tamar’s mother Trijntje said she was told by the authorities that the driver was German, and not an Iraqi asylum seeker. She told The Sun: “They knew the driver was an asylum seeker from Iraq and travelling with a group of Iraqi friends – but they were afraid of the public reaction. So they withheld the truth.” Jamal T., 33, an Iraqi migrant living in central Germany, was driving a Mazda with three other men in the car on the fateful night six years ago. Trijntje says she was told his nationality and political status was concealed amid fears it could stir up fury within supporters of the anti-immigration Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV). The prosecution sought just a mere eight week prison sentence for the Iraqi driver, on the basis that he negligently caused a fatal accident, and subsequently fled the scene. The road where Tamar was killed – just three miles from home Credit: Supplied Tamar was found dead in a ditch after the suspect believed he had driven over an ‘animal’ Credit: Supplied But appearing before the Harlem court, Jamal T. claimed he believed he had driven over “an animal” rather than a person. Devastated Trijntje, however, blasted his defence as “outrageous” and said the verdict issued made her lose faith in the Dutch legal system. “At the moment it happened in 2020, the family liaison officer could only tell us what the prosecution allowed them to say. So we were told the perpetrator was a German,” she said. “But the prosecution knew who it was of course. This later came out. “They said didn’t want a ‘Wilder’s effect’ in Holland, because they were afraid of the public reaction. This is why we were not told there were four men in the car and they were asylum seekers. “And now today in court, six years later, everything from the judge was just ‘not guilty, not guilty, not guilty’. “In court [Jamal T.] claimed he thought that he had run over an animal, then the judge even said: ‘Yeah, I can imagine he thought it was an animal.’ “That’s how it goes here in Holland. After that, my husband and I left the courtroom. We were devastated.” The idyllic area of Marken, where Tamar lived Credit: Supplied Tamar had left her home in Marken in the early hours of the morning and was later found dead Credit: Supplied Trijntje and her lawyer have long maintained that the driver and his three passengers – none of whom were recalled from Germany and made to appear in court – did not just knock Tamar down. They fear the men physically moved Tamar’s body from the road into a nearby ditch, where it was later found. After investigating, experts from the Netherlands’ military police force also concluded that Tamar had not just been knocked over by a car, but that her body had been moved. The family’s lawyer Sébas Diekstra previously said: “There is no other possibility. There was no other person there, no other car. Only those people were there. “Tamar was lying in the ditch with her legs straight and her hands above her head. Even the grass underneath her wasn’t flattened. “If she had rolled into the ditch, the grass would have been crushed. So she must have been placed there straight away.” Police officers who found Tamar on the road said her arms were positioned upward and her legs were extended straight together. One officer said: “As if she had been laid out.” Another cop reported seeing what appeared to be a straight-line mark on the tarmac consistent with something having been dragged. And several of the first officers on the scene also questioned whether the physical evidence fitted the scenario of a straightforward collision. Lawyer Sébas later concluded: “The traces found and expert findings show that the final position in which Tamar was found cannot be explained by the collision itself.” “Concrete indications for an alternative scenario are lacking. One must assume that her body was dragged or moved after the collision.” Trijntje said she believes the men in the car knew they had hit a person – not an animal. “They hit Tamar, then they drove to the parking place in Marken,” she claimed. “Two hours later they went back to the dyke close to where Tamar had been hit, and found the police already there. “And it was here that officers told them to turn left because there was an investigation going on. So they knew exactly what had happened. “They knew it was never just a small animal they hit. And yet they got away with that.” The group of Iraqi men had driven to the Netherlands from Germany, where they had applied for asylum. They had been camping in the Netherlands and later told police the reason they were driving along the country roads in the early hours of the morning, was that they were looking for an open camp site. Trijntje and her remaining family has always questioned this – especially as there are no camp sites open at that time. Within a few hours of the crash, however, the group suddenly decided to drive back 450km to Marburg in central Germany, where the car was washed and put up for sale two months later. But it was not the authorities who revealed any of this to the Boes family. They only became aware of it after doing a search for the vehicle themselves. Police then found the driver’s Mazda 3 in Germany, and forensic experts recovered Tamar’s DNA from underneath the vehicle. In June 2021, the public prosecution office initially said the driver would face zero criminal charges and be handed a mere 1,500 euros fine for “careless driving”. But Trijntje and her family refused to accept this, and lobbied the support of a lawyer. An ‘Article 12 procedure’ was then triggered – compelling a judge to review the decision of the Public Prosecution Service not to prosecute the suspect for leaving the scene of an accident. This time the prosecution sought a prison sentence of eight weeks and compensation of 48,000 euros for the bereaved family. In court last week, only driver Jamal T. had to appear in court, while the fellow passengers remain in Germany. “They’re just carrying on, living their lives “ Trijntje said. “The only time they said sorry was during the hearing on June 13. “They said, ‘Sorry it took so long,’ but they never explained why it took so long. It wasn’t an apology for what happened.” She recently told the Dutch Times: “My daugh­ter was left in a road­side ditch like a dead animal. You wouldn’t wish that on any­one.’ The prosecution now has two weeks to appeal the acquittal verdict and take it to a higher court. “We have to keep fighting,” Trijntje said. “This is about injustice. It’s about lying. It’s about getting away with lies. “It all sends out a terrible message to the next person who hits someone on the road. They will now think that you can just move the body, keep lying, run away, and you’ll just get away with it. “Things are going crazy. This isn’t only happening in Holland. It’s happening right across Europe. There is no justice anymore. Good is bad and bad is good.”