Police have received 80 tips about the missing Arjen Kamphuis
The police have received 80 tips about the Dutchman Arjan Kamphuis (46) who has been reported missing after he was last seen in Bodø on August 20th.
Police lack secure and confirmed observations of the security expert working with WikiLeaks. Almost one month after he apparently checked out of the hotel where he stayed in Bodø, many have said they have seen him in different places, but the police have not been able to verify any of the tips.
"There are many questions we do not have answers to. We have 80 different tips to follow up, so it's a comprehensive investigation, " police inspector Bjarte Walla in the Nordland police district told NTB.
He leads the investigation into the man who has unexpectedly disappeared. Arjen Kamphuis checked out of his hotel in Bodø on 20 August, allegedly with two dark bags. In one, the police believe he had a folding canoe which, along with several personal belongings, was found in the sea between Fauske and Rognan on Tuesday night.
Kamphuis was planning to travel from Nordland by train to Trondheim and then fly home to Amsterdam on 22 August, but he never used this flight ticket.
Without any preceding signs, his phone contacted a base station in the small town Vikeså in Bjerkreim south of Rogaland in the hour before midnight on the 30th of August. First, it was his Dutch SIM card that was registered, then it was switched to a German SIM card that is also registered in his name. Since then there have been no technical traces of the man.
According to VG, a witness should have observed Kamphuis together with two other men in Vikeså the same evening the phone was registered by the base station. All three should have had walking gear and two of them spoke Dutch while the third spoke German.
"We have a tip about an observation in Denmark at the beginning of September. We cooperate with Danish police about this, but it's completely impossible to say anything about the validity of these tips," Walla says.
He reiterates that the police keep everything open about what may have happened to the Dutchman. They have three main hypotheses: that the 46-year-old may have been exposed to an accident, that he himself has chosen to remain hidden or that he has been subjected to a criminal offense.
"We have so far no information in the case that allows us to exclude any of the three hypotheses," says Walla, adding: "His described affiliation with WikiLeaks has no impact on the job the police do. We investigate this the same way as any other missing persons case."
BBM
This is a slightly different story about the sim cards.... is it confirmed that both would have been his? It was said AK has a phone with two sim cards anyway. I understood before that one of the sim cards was taken out and replaced by another. The way it is described here, the phone would have been switched from one card to the other. Maybe it was in the phone already, maybe it wasn't but it was his and he had it with him.
Frustrating! Would have been better if the German sim card had remained in use so it could be traced!