Drug binge, sex club visit and fight with fiancé led Maltese man to call in terror scare on Dutch train

An Amsterdam cocktail of cocaine, crystal meth and a visit to a sex club without his fiancé’s knowledge culminated in a Maltese man calling in a bogus terrorist threat on a Dutch train last Christmas.

The Maltese man, identified only as 45-year-old Stephen S. by the Dutch courts, was detained in Holland on 27 December after he called the Dutch railway service to warn them that his girlfriend was a radicalised fundamentalist who, he said, was planning “to destroy everyone in Europe”.

He reported that she was on the train from Amsterdam to Berlin. The train was stopped in the Dutch town of Oldenzaal where it was thoroughly searched by sniffer dogs and security personnel. But, according to the Maltese national’s lawyer, Stephen S. had only made the threat because he wanted to get his girlfriend back after they had an argument.

After hearing recordings of himself calling in the threat to the Dutch railway service on Tuesday this week in court, Stephen S. reportedly could not believe his own ears, although he could clearly recognise his own voice.

In the recording, the middleaged Maltese businessman heard himself warn railway employees that his girlfriend had become radicalised, that was on an intercity train from Amsterdam to Berlin, and that she “plans to destroy everyone in Europe”.

“I wanted to die when I heard that,” Stephen S. told a court in the Dutch town of Almelose.

The phone call was taken very seriously indeed by the people at the Dutch Railway Safety Centre, the police and the army – so much so that an intercity train was stopped in Oldenzaal station, all the passengers were made to disembark, explosives experts and sniffer dogs were called in and the passengers had to be taken on to their destinations by bus.

According to Stephen S.’s lawyer, Marco van Leussen, the wrong international train had even been stopped in all the chaos following the Maltese man’s threat.

The Dutch authorities now want to recoup some of the costs associated with the operation and are asking Stephen S. to pay up €1,705, a sum the Dutch court described as “a limited amount”.

It was on the evening of 27 December when the Maltese businessman and his fiancé, whose nationality was not disclosed, took a good dose of cocaine before planning to go out to dinner in Amsterdam.

“Then the paranoia struck,” the Maltese businessman told the court on Tuesday. According to his testimony, Stephen S. had “an exchange of words” with his partner and instead went out on his own that night.

Stephen S. told the courts on Tuesday that he eventually ended up at a sex club, where he says his drink was spiked with crystal meth. When he returned to his hotel room he was met with a fuming fiancé who had seen receipts of payments for several bottles of champagne at the sex club on his mobile phone.

His fiancé promptly grabbed her bags, left the hotel and headed for Amsterdam Central Station, saying she wanted to go to her sister.

In the meantime, Steven S. recounted how he continued trying to call her for hours. He said he drank the hotel room’s mini-bar dry. He then called the national railway’s customer service centre and made the threat.

Stephen S.’s lawyer insists that his client only wanted to get his fiancé back and argues that no false terrorism threat was made: “There is no terrorist here,” he told the court.

In the wake of the 27 December incident, Stephen S. had been arrested and was detained until 15 January, when he was released on bail of €50,000.

Stephen S. has been undergoing a drug rehabilitation programme at the U-center in Epen, which he described as “a great place”. According to rehab experts who have been working with him, Stephen S. has been addicted to cocaine and marijuana since his days at an English boarding school. He had also tried to get himself clean in six rehabilitation clinics.

After he was detained in prison in Arnhem, Stephen S. “saw the light”, he told the court. The court suspended his pre-trial detention with immediate effect.

The complainant by the Dutch authorities takes into account that the Maltese ‘entrepreneur’, also described as a ‘project developer’, created serious unrest by threatening fundamentalist violence and by threatening passengers, employees of the railway and those present on the train platforms between Amsterdam and Oldenzaal.

Dutch prosecutors are arguing the Maltese national should pay €10,000 into a damage fund for victims, another €10,000 in fines and serve 12 months imprisonment of which eight would be suspended.

A final judgement on the case will be delivered on 24 April.