Two police officers standing trial for their involvement in the death of Aruban tourist Mitch Henriquez should not be held responsible for his death, the prosecution service said on Monday.

Henriquez died in July 2015, a day after being arrested by a team of five officers at the Zuiderpark in The Hague. Police said they responded after he claimed to be carrying a gun. Video footage of the scene showed the 42-year-old being restrained using a choke hold before his motionless body was bundled into a police van.

His death triggered several nights of rioting in The Hague’s Schilderswijk district, where there has been a history of tension between the police and the large minority ethnic population.

Two of the five officers were charged with fatally assaulting Henriquez after an initial pathologist’s report concluded that he had died as a result of the choke hold. All five have been internally disciplined by the police but none has been dismissed.

But in court on Monday, the prosecution said it had concluded on the basis of other expert witnesses that his death was the caused by acute stress syndrome. Therefore the officers could not be held responsible.

Excessive force

The officers were guilty of assault but should not face punishment because they had already suffered enough, the prosecution said. The court was told they had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and received threats since the incident. They gave evidence in court from behind screens and their voices were distorted to protect their identity.

The prosecution said the officers had used excessive force in restraining Henriquez. One officer, identified in court as DH02, punched the victim as he lay on the ground and rubbed pepper spray in his face, in breach of police guidelines.

‘There was no need to use violence to speed up the arrest,’ said the prosecution lawyer. ‘The officers should be held to account for their choices.’

Family walked out

Last week most of Henriquez’s family walked out of court after it emerged that the prosecution had based its case on low-quality video footage of his arrest. The films were copied from better quality originals which were produced in court by defence lawyer Richard Korver.

The internal investigation team which reviewed the case said that the better quality footage had been left out of the case files because of an administrative error. But the family claimed it showed the case was a ‘phantom trial’ to prevent the truth emerging.

Before leaving the courtroom, Korver said the investigation was so riddled with errors that a fair trial was impossible. ‘We have no choice other than to indicate in this way to the court, but also to the public prosecution service and the internal investigation unit, that this investigation is simply substandard.’

Lip readers

Korver said the original footage revealed details that contradicted the prosecution’s case. He said Henriquez appeared to turn blue in the film, whereas experts who relied on the inferior material concluded that he was not deprived of oxygen because he had not turned blue.

Korver also called two police lip-readers to study the video footage in court. The witnesses said police officers had said to each other ‘Seems dead to me’ and ‘he’s stopped responding’. But defence lawyers for the officers claimed that their words were being misinterpreted and that they had said Henriquez was ‘dead tired’ rather than dead.

The family failed in an earlier bid to have all five officers put on trial for causing Henriquez’s death and lost a bid to have their names disclosed so they could bring a civil case against them.