The Moroccan ploughed into unsuspecting people, injuring eight people, two of them seriously.
According to police, there was “no indication whatsoever” the incident was a terrorist attack. “There is no indication whatsoever that this is a terrorist attack,” Amsterdam police spokesman Marjolein Koek said at the time.
Fox News called the driver a “Frenchman” but after a Dutch online news site, Geenstijl, published a screenshot of the police docket recently, and it was revealed that the driver was in fact Moroccan.
The incident received immediate widespread attention after several extremist attacks in Europe over the past year involving vehicles, including a deadly van attack in London just the week before.
The staff member of the North Holland police unit was arrested “on suspicion of violating office secrecy”. The Security Integrity and Complaints Department is investigating the leak.
The statement was published on Politie.nl. The name of the detained employee has not been made public yet.
GeenStijl said in response they do not know who the leaker was, because they had received an anonymous tip.
A witness meanwhile has already come forward saying that the police had not been interested in her story about the events on the evening of 10 June.
Unfortunately, camera images of the incident “are no longer available”, police said, despite the fact that at least 15 cameras cover the station square. Police spokesperson Rob van der Veen told the media: “You can not capture every square meter, and this area where the accident took place had taken place outside the view of the cameras.”
The witness Fien Ekelschot, said she was only a few meters from the “diabetic patient”, but that the police had no interest in her testimony. “We have everything on camera,” they told Ekelschot. In her testimony she said the driver had acted with evil intent.
An Israeli witness told Belgian news Telebelg, that he had seen the “dark man with a big beard” taken into custody.
Geenstijl said on their website that “it remains unclear whether the agent who leaked information by telephone to a salafist mosque about a terrorist investigation, was ever detained”.
They said they would be “invoking source protection” if the police comes knocking at their door.