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This page is about the criminal Martin van 't Klooster who's picture appears below. Apologies to all the good people of the same name from the fine nation of Nederland. It is sad when you find that one of your own is a bad apple, but unfortunately that is the reality of this world. The man shown below is a criminal who thinks he can get away with kidnapping, attempted rape and various other offences. The object of this page is to do what the police have not: to name him, show his face, detail some of his crimes and shame before to the public.
Martin Klooster & his wife before she left him.
My name is Warren Mars. I am Australian. In August and September 2012 my partner Anna Linden and I embarked on our dream of the Grand Tour of Europe. We had many wonderful experiences and saw many wonderful sights, but our trip will forever be scarred by our horrible time at the hands of Martin Klooster and his gang on the Ile d'Oléron in France.
On the 7th of October 2012, we decided to stay at Camping les Seulières in Saint Denis d'Oléron. The Manager: Martin van 't Klooster, seemed friendly and spoke English well. He invited us into the camp bar for drinks and since we enjoy meeting new people and a party atmosphere we happily accepted. It turned out that Martin Klooster was a Frieslander by birth but had lived for a long time in Belgium. He was fluent in English, Dutch and French. He recommended Belgian beer and since we knew nothing about it we asked him to serve us some that he recommended. He opened the beers out of sight behind the bar and brought them to our table. We drank them and chatted with him about the Netherlands. I had brought my guitar along and I soon launched into song, playing some Dutch and Australian tunes. Martin seemed to enjoy this although his petanque playing French permanent residents did not and gave us some dirty looks.
He brought out another round of drinks which he told us were "on the house". I thought he was merely being friendly and drank mine down and half of Anna's as well. He told us that he knew a nice restaurant where we could get a nice meal at a good price and play music. He asked us if we would like to go there, and we said yes.
We now know that he had spiked our drinks with a "date rape" drug, probably some form of Benzodiazepine, such as Rohypnol, that induces sedation, compliance and amnesia. After he detected that the drug had taken effect he put us in his car. We lost consciousness and memory shortly after we were seated.
We woke up 2 hours later in the dark on a deserted beach. Only he knows what happened in those 2 hours. He forced me, in my compliant state, to leave the car and then drove off down the beach with my partner Anna. I remember standing there alone on a foreign beach feeling as though it were a dream. I had very little consciousness then but a particle of it came to life and told me that this was VERY wrong and that he should not be allowed to get away with it.
In the 15 minutes or so that Martin Klooster and Anna were gone, he first ordered her to get into the front of his car, which she did due to the hypnotic character of the drug. He then attempted to rape her. All the while she was resisting him as strongly as possible. Perhaps she was not as drugged as he had hoped, since I had drunk half of her beer. She fought him and yelled at him and threatened to call the Police with the mobile phone that she pretended she had in her handbag. Anna's resistance was not the only thing to interfere with the schemes of this evil man. Fortunately for us, the tide had come in and he was forced to turn around his 4WD and return the way he had come, driving through water some of the way.
As they approached me, Anna insisted he stop and pick me up. I was furious with him despite the fact that I was heavily sedated and I opened his door and punched him. I then attempted to pull him from the car, but due to the sedation I fell over. Martin Klooster then ran from the car and waited in the shadows to monitor the situation. I quickly lost consciousness again and Martin returned to the car, put me in the back and drove off with us.
When I awoke again we were back at Camping les Seulières and Martin Klooster had left us in his car with the keys still in it. Looking back now in light of questions that the Gendarmerie later asked us, we can see that this was another clever trick on the part of this evil man to attempt to frame us for car theft in order to throw the light of suspicion away from himself.
The next thing I remember I was being savagely beaten by a group of French pensioners; residents at Camping les Seulières, who were armed with metal clubs. Clearly they had been summoned by Mr Klooster for this purpose while he was driving home. What with being outnumbered and still drugged with the damn sedative I endured quite a hammering, suffering numerous blows and gashes to the head, later requiring 17 stitches in hospital and concussion effects lasting 6 months and more. Note that Martin Klooster did not participate in the beating himself, even though he was the youngest and strongest there. He was too smart and too cowardly for that, and got his underlings to do his dirty work.
Precisely why he had his gang of aging thugs administer a serious beating is unclear to me even now. Perhaps it was yet another ruse to throw the suspicion away from himself. In any event it is clear that they formed a criminal gang of some kind and had no qualms about administering serious injury on command.
During the beating I gave them a lecture on what Australia had done for the French during the Wars and the great sacrifices we had made for such an ungrateful and undeserving lot such as themselves. This sermon only seemed to increase their rage. But somewhere, deep inside, the fighting spirit of the ANZACs awoke in me and I got to my feet and started to fight back. I could hardly see and my movements were slow but I saw one of their faces in a dim circle of awareness and I punched it as hard as I could. One by one I struck them and they melted away. Finally I saw the big man with his long club coming down at my head. I tried to evade but my body was too slow. I knew the blow had done real damage but I landed a good punch to his left eye and he fell, cried out and then ran off. They were all gone. Amazingly, despite all odds I had fought them off! Never underestimate the spirit of the ANZACs!
During this awful scene Anna was sitting in the front of the car drugged and in shock when she heard me yelling and she saw the mob beating me. She didn't know what to do but got out of the car to attempt to assist. As she moved towards the mob one of the petanque players' wives grabbed her with two hands to stop her. When she saw the blood she said "What have you done?" to the gang, who looked stupidly at her.
Warren Mars at the hospital after being stitched up and 2 days later showing some of the head wounds.
The gang were gone but my trials were not over yet. The criminal: Martin Klooster, was not only a coward and a rapist; he was also a liar and a schemer. He telephoned the Gendarmerie, telling them that I was assaulting camp members and asking them to deal with me. Very clever: by taking the initiative he not only preempted any approach to the authorities on our part, he also found people to defeat us when his gang could not.
Martin Klooster knew what would happen: I was filthy with sand and clay from being on the ground, wet with sea water from the beach and covered in the blood that was streaming from my wounds. I was heavily drugged, stressed by the situation to a furious pitch and fighting for our lives. I was NOT in a reasonable state, the Gendarmes spoke almost no English and I spoke virtually no French.
I heard the sound of a man approaching and an order to lie on the ground. It could have been another of Klooster's agents so I asked who he was and he said "Police". I demanded to see his identification and he demanded I lie down. I demanded again to see his ID and then he Tasered me.
Marechal Baudry was well trained and the electrode penetrated my skin just over my heart. The sensation was much the same as touching the live wire in your domestic power point. Normally the tetanus from a shock causes one to pull away and the shock is brief. Not so with a Taser... but so furious was I, and so desperate, that I took the full charge and did not fall.
The Marechal found this unbelievable, but he was a resourceful Gendarme and he and a colleague each produced a hand operated model and they electrocuted me on the knee and the shoulder simultaneously. I tried to resist, but this time it was too much and down I went and was soon handcuffed.
During this business Martin Klooster was standing in front of his shop watching proceedings. Anna confronted him at this point saying: "Look what you've done you bastard!". Naturally the slimy weasel had nothing to say.
No member of the Gendarmerie spoke English and we spoke no French, so they assumed that all was as Martin Klooster had told them. Since I was covered in blood, mud and water and resisted arrest I must have looked guilty.
In an hour or so an ambulance arrived and Anna and I were escorted to the Rochefort Hospital, (I still in handcuffs). My wounds were many and I was disinfected and given 17 stitches to the forehead and eye orbit. 4 members of the Gendarmerie stayed to watch the proceedings. I had my passport confiscated and was told to appear at their headquarters at St Pierre d'Oleron the next afternoon where I would be able to make a statement and collect it.
After a difficult night for both of us in the hospital, where Anna was given no bed and I was given no shower and neither of us would have been given any breakfast except that I protested, I was forced to pay $1600 expenses before we could leave.
Anna in France, before and after.
After some VERY fortunate negotiation of buses the next morning, we managed to cover the 70kms to get to the local headquarters of the Gendarmerie at the appointed time, where we made separate and complete statements to Marechal Baudry with the assistance of two translators. We signed the statements, which were all in French, but we were not given a copy. While we were waiting there some of the men that had attacked me the night before came in with black eyes to tell their story.
A car load of Gendarmes then escorted us back to Camping les Seulières where we recovered our vehicle and our belongings. Martin Klooster and the men who had beaten me the previous night were still there. We then followed the Gendarmes back to St Pierre where they located us a suitable hotel for the night.
Naturally this experience ruined the rest of our time in France and Belgium, although we did see some of Paris and we did visit the Villers–Bretonneux Australian National Memorial. This would be a moving experience for any Australian but made all the more so after all we had been through. We were so glad to make it out of the French speaking world and into the civilisation and decency of the Netherlands, truly it felt like getting out of jail.
We reported this event to the Australian Embassy in Paris where we were served by a French woman. She told us there was nothing she could do directly but gave us a list of French lawyers whom we could engage at our own expense. She also gave us free use of the phone to call my insurance company.
Back in Australia I wrote direct to Marechal Baudry asking him of the progress in the matter and whether there had been any conclusion. I received no reply although I did receive an offer from the Rochefort Hospital to reimburse me 18 Euros if I jumped through some hoops...
I then wrote to the French Consulate General in Sydney detailing the facts and asking them to contact the Gendarmerie in St Pierre d'Oleron to establish the standing of their investigation. I also pointed out that Martin Klooster obviously knew what he was doing and had probably used this trick on other victims in the past.
I received the following from Stéphane BASSE, Chargé des affaires sociales Consulat général de France à Sydney.
"You are an australian citizen so you have to contact your Embassy in Paris or your lawyer."
As we approach the first anniversary of this horrible night we both feel that we have aged 10 years and we can see that we are both permanently scarred, albeit in different ways: I have a number of large scars on my forehead which will become very obvious as my hair disappears, as well as the scar below my left eye. I was unable to think with my customary clarity for many months after the event, presumably due to concussion, and even now I am not certain that I have regained the full power of my intellect. Anna has had trouble sleeping, reliving the incident over and over again, it has made her very nervous and afraid of future travelling. The loss of self confidence and greater emotional propensity have prevented her finding work.
In view of the total lack of help from the authorities and the continuing absence of justice in this matter, I have taken the step of bringing the crimes of this horrible excuse for a human being into the light of the internet. Why should a criminal like this be allowed to get away with such serious crimes simply because the victims are foreigners? Imagine how many other innocent travellers have been drugged, raped and God knows what else by this man and his gang of petanque players...
Naturally, Camping les Seulières should be avoided at all costs, your life may well be at risk should Martin Klooster view you as a target. If any readers have similar or related stories about this man please send me an email and perhaps we can force the authorities to act.
As for you Martin Klootzak, don't think you can get away with this forever. We reserve all options available to us under the law and you may yet find yourself in the dock, squirming in the midst of your lies.
