ARNHEM, The Netherlands, Sept 3 (Reuters) – A 15-year-old
Dutch boy was sentenced to a year in juvenile detention on
Monday for stabbing to death a girl whose Facebook posts
reportedly led to a contract for her killing.
The case, known in the Netherlands as the “Facebook murder”,
caused widespread debate about the role of social media in
violent crime.
The court said the boy did not know the victim and had
murdered her “at the request or instructions of others”.
Dutch media reported that the 15-year-old victim, named in
court documents as Winsie, had argued for weeks with two friends
on the social networking site before they allegedly asked the
defendant, who was 14 at the time, to kill her.
He was offered a 1,000 euro payment, the media reported.
“I am not happy with one year for my daughter’s life,” her
father said outside the courthouse. “But that’s what the law
book says. We were powerless and so were the authorities.”
(Reporting by Svebor Kranjc in Arnhem and Anthony Deutsch in
Amsterdam, editing by Diana Abdallah)
