Mayor of the De Wolden municipality Roger de Groot speaks to the press at the police station in AssenThursday after the arrest of the 67-year-old father of the family kept for nearly a decade in a farmhouse and who was found on Tuesday in a house in Ruinerwold. The man is suspected of depriving people of their liberty, harming the health of others and money laundering. The police said they were investigating whether a "certain belief in faith" was behind the case. | AFP-JIJI

World / Crime & Legal

Dutch police arrest second suspect in case of family held in isolation for years

Reuters

AMSTERDAM – Dutch police said on Thursday they had arrested a second man on suspicion of “unlawful deprivation of liberty” in the case of a family that had lived in apparent seclusion on a farm for years.

The first suspect was charged earlier on Thursday with unlawful detention and harming others’ health, and will remain in detention for at least two more weeks, prosecutors said.

He is 58 years old and the formal renter of the property in Ruinerwold village in the northern province of Drenthe, said police, who did not release the names of either man because of privacy laws.

“Today we arrested a second suspect in the Ruinerwold investigation” Drenthe police said in a statement.

“The arrested person, a 67-year-old man from Ruinerwold, is one of the six persons discovered this Monday in the house located at Buitenhuizenweg,” the statement said, referring to the name of the road on which the farm is located.

Police have said they acted on a tip and found five siblings, estimated to be between 18 and 25 years old, on the farm, along with a man they identified as their ailing father. Police said the group may have lived in isolation for nine years.

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