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Dutch radio station prosecuted as criminal organization

01 July 1991

The Amsterdam progressive station Radio 100, which is run by volunteers and has been on the air since 1986, was the subject of a massive police operation on 15 May when 15 people were arrested. Radio 100 has no broadcasting license and the public prosecutor initiated an intensive police investigation in November 1990 on the basis of section 140 of the penal code. He argued that the organisation held large sums of illegitimate profits which made Radio 100 a criminal organisation. Section 140 concerns participating in an organization with a view to committing criminal offences under which individuals can be held responsible for activities initiated by a larger group, if the law decides that they were part of the group. Taking part in the actual criminal acts is not necessary, it is sufficient for an individual to have contributed to the founding or the preservation of the organization, by being a member for instance. Even a less direct relation can be punishable as complicity. This juridical instrument was initially said to be essential in the fight against organized crime. But so far it has been used on a number of occasions against squatters and similar "undesired elements" in society. Squatters in Nijmegen and Groningen were prosecuted as a criminal organization including those that had only made the coffee or paid to a collective household cashbox. The Dutch supreme court (Hoge Raad) has accepted the use of wide- ranging investigations in these cases which include powers to tap telephones. Criminal law Professor M. Groenhuijsen of Tilburg University says that: "Section 140 is used against people that you don't like. Groups of which the law says: "We have had enough of this." Other observers see the unsuspected moves against the radio station as a new crackdown on what's left of the subcultural and radical structures of the 1980s.