Netherlands: Van Traa: debate conclusions
01 May 1996
In a three-day debate in early May on the 5000-page report of the parliamentary enquiry commission (PEC) chaired by MP Maarten van Traa, the cabinet and a large majority in parliament have reached agreement on most of the issues raised. A new legal framework will be drafted to regulate in some detail the powers of the police during investigations, although the exceptionally rigid regulations proposed by Van Traa were considered to be unworkable. The public prosecutor's office will be charged with exercising a more thorough authority over sensitive operations. The Criminal Intelligence Departments (CID's) where most of the covert policing took place will be reorganised under the general criminal detective branches. The so-called "closed route", a fully secret phase in criminal investigations, will be terminated entirely: the court will be entitled to full knowledge of all police activities related to criminal investigations on which it is required to pass sentence, and only the judge will decide on whether extremely sensitive information, such as the identity of an informant, can be withheld from the defence. The transshipment of clandestine goods such as drugs and weapons with the intent to identify receiving criminal networks and build an informer's credibility will only be allowed in the most exceptional cases with the explicit personal consent of the minister of justice. The central criminal intelligence division (CRI) is also being reorganized with the intent to turn it into a more effective knot in the information-sharing network, with new "crime desks" to service the regional and foreign police services. The CRI is setting up a system to permanently monitor the top 100 major criminals, and it is also increasing its cooperation with the BVD security service to the extent that joint analyses will be drafted and collection sources pooled where appropriate. The central police infiltration department will be expanded with new personnel. Fresh undercover agents are desperately needed since criminal informants are in principle no longer allowed to play an active role in the post-Van Traa era.
Over the last weeks, new information has surfaced on an apparent Belgian angle in the "drug transshipment" operations. A Belgian police officer, Willy van Mechelen, who is himself under investigation for corruption has given evidence on several drug transports in which the Belgian Rijkswacht was said to be involved. Mr Van Mechelen asserts that over the last five years between ten and twenty containers with drugs were let through Antwerpen harbour at the request of Dutch authorities, sometimes in cooperation with the BKA. In a related incident, a Belgian criminal and police informant named Martin Swennen, who is assumed to have given evidence to Van Traa, was shot and killed on March 15 in an Amsterdam cafe by a man who was reported to have shouted "you talk to the police" before firing his gun. Van Swennen was an informer to a.o. Mr Van Mechelen, and is believed to have been working for the famous Dutch criminal Johan Verhoek, who is presently on trial for organising a major cannabis shipment in the early 1990s. Belgian Minister of Justice, De Clerck, has confirmed that since 1990 in five operations about ten containers holding narcotics were let through on transit to Holland. He added that he believed all the drugs had been seized afterwards, because the Dutch judicial authorities had promised this.
Minister of justice Mrs Winnie Sorgdrager has promised in parliament that she will investigate how members of foreign police services can be forced to supply information on their activities on Dutch soil. Representatives of both the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the German Bundeskriminalamt refused to testify before the parliamentary commission. Observers note that it is highly unlikely that the Dutch government can exert any effective pressure on the DEA and BKA, since their drug liaison officers enjoy full diplomatic im