The Dutch weblog GeenStijl has just obtained and published the identity of the man who on Saturday, June 10th, wounded eight people (including three Israelis) when he ploughed his car through a crowd at the Station Square, right in front of Amsterdam Central station.

The Amsterdam Police force has thus far been reluctant to publish the perpetrator’s name, and had released him after four days of detention. The police also made the highly unlikely claim that there was no camera footage of the incident because all 15 camera’s surrounding the area had been in “pre-set modus”, which meant that they weren’t recording anything.

About the picture they published, GeenStijl writes:

“This picture has been taken from a screen which is showing the police system called Bluespot. It concerns the file of the so called “blood sugar driver” at the Station square. The file belongs to Khalid Karmaoui, born on 9 September in Casablanca, Morocco. The date, June 10, checks out. The licence plate, 04-XL-NN, checks out. And the police’s explanation that the driver was suffering from low blood sugar seems to be compatible with that day’s warm weather and his possible observance of the Ramadan.”

An Amsterdam Police spokesperson has now responded by saying the picture indeed seems to show a police system, and that they’re “taking this very seriously“.

By the way, Maarten van Dun, a Dutch reporter for the local Amsterdam newspaper Het Parool, came out on Twitter saying the man’s name had been known to journalists for a long time, but said that his newspaper decided that:

“Origin and background alone are never news. The same holds for this time.”

In other words: both the police and media withheld this information from the public.