NETHERLANDS: Activists compensated (1)
01 January 1991
NETHERLANDS: Activists compensated
artdoc August=1994
A burglary by activists on 19 November 1984 in the offices of the
Netherlands' Counter Intelligence Detachment of the Landmacht
Inlichtingendienst (Army Intelligence Service) in Utrecht
uncovered documents indicating that the military intelligence
service held extensive dossiers on many members of the anti-
militarist and peace movements and on other organizations. The
publication of stolen documents led to the reorganization of the
intelligence services of army, air force and navy into one
central Military Intelligence Service to improve oversight. Ten
people united in their protest against their being registered and
filed for access to their files. All Dutch courts rejected their
demands, but their appeal to the European Commission for Human
Rights proved more successful - the group of ten anti-militarist
and peace activists (Vleugels et al) were granted one thousand
guilders compensation each. The Commission ruled that the 1972
Royal Decree by which the intelligence services function, did not
adequately formulate the conditions under which the military
intelligence service was allowed to spy on people and thus
violated article 8 of the European Convention on Human rights.
Specifically the Commission ruled that the tasks and competencies
of the service, the categories of people that could become the
object of investigation, the circumstances under which this could
take place and the measures that could be used are insufficiently
indicated in the Decree. Also the safeguards (ie: access to a
court, a sufficiently powerful ombudsman etc.) fall short of what
the European Convention and jurisprudence would require. Finally,
the control over the intelligence service was found to be
inadequate.
The importance of the ECHR case is that Dutch legal safeguards
are considered inadequate by the European Commission. Although
the Commission's ruling formally addressed itself against the
1972 Decree, the wording of the 1988 Law on the Intelligence and
Security Services is virtually identical and thus the ruling
would seem to bear on the present law and on the BVD which
operates under the same rules. This has now been reaffirmed by
the Dutch Raad van State. There have not been any formal
reactions to the Raad's ruling so far, but it can be expected
that the Minister for the Interior will have to reconcile privacy
concerns with the BVD's security obsessions.
Statewatch, Vol 4 no 4, July-August 1994