Police have arrested a 36-year-old man from Utrecht in connection with an incident on the A2 motorway near Amsterdam on Thursday involving crime reporter John van den Heuvel.

The A2 was closed off to traffic for nearly an hour with police initially only disclosing the action was prompted by a threat to a person who was under police protection.

Crime reporter John van den Heuvel subsequently revealed he was the person in question in his paper the Telegraaf and thanked security officials for their alert reaction.

Telegraaf Wim Hoogland senior editor said any comment on the incident is ‘speculative’. ‘There is much we don’t yet know. It is a good thing the police intervened. It is bad enough that our reporters are being threatened by criminals,’ he said.

The incident comes six months after crime reporter Peter R de Vries was gunned down in a busy street in Amsterdam shortly after leaving the studio of TV gossip show RTL Boulevard.

De Vries is said not have wanted police protection because it would make it impossible for him to do his job. It is thought that shooting may have been related to the Marengo gangland murder trial in which De Vries represented key witness Nabil B.