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Holland: police spies

01 January 1991

Holland: police spies
artdoc May=1992

The Dutch rijkspolitie (state police) refuse to obey "for
security reasons" a ruling of the Amsterdam court, which
states that the identity of police infiltrators should be known
to the public prosecutor and the examining magistrate. If the
police continues to defy the court order, the two suspects will
be set free, since the statements of police infiltrators will
not be admitted as evidence. A spokesman of the rijkspolitie
has stated that the ruling will cause all undercover operations
by rijkspolitie officers to be discontinued.

A bill relating to the use of anonymous witness statements was
presented to parliament early this year. With this proposal
the Ministry of Justice hopes to comply with the criticism of
the European Court, which ruled in Kostovski vs. The
Netherlands in 1989 that the Dutch practice of admitting the
statements of anonymous witnesses as evidence could not be
tolerated. The new bill maintains the admissibility of
anonymous statements in criminal processes, provided a number
of provisions is fulfilled. A witness who wants to maintain
anonymity has to convince the judge that there is a serious
threat to his safety or well-being. Furthermore his identity
has to be made known to the examining judge. In practice, the
police are believed to frequently offer anonymity to witnesses
who didn't ask for it in exchange for a statement that can be
used to support a case. In recent years there have been
several cases in which lawyers could prove that statements
which were presented as being made by multiple anonymous
witnesses were in fact made by one, unreliable witness.
The new bill offers police officers working undercover and
members of observation and arrest teams a limited anonymity
by allowing them to testify in disguise. The national Lawyers
Guild has criticised the bill, because it does not require
that the threat to witnesses is substantiated by facts and
circumstances.

Netherlands EC

Statewatch (Amsterdam)