Netherlands: Border controls
01 July 1994
Several incidents have been reported recently in which German or Belgian police personnel crossed the Dutch border to make arrests and take the suspects back across the border without consulting the Dutch authorities. On 17 May in Enschede, a unit of the German police pursued a suspected drug dealer onto the Dutch side of the border and arrested him. The Dutch police arrived at the border 15 minutes after the German police had taken their hooded suspect back into the Federal Republic. The case is still under investigation by the Dutch authorities. In another case in June 1991, Belgian Rijkswacht personnel arrested two ageing safecrackers. They claimed to have made the arrests on Belgian soil, but an analysis by the Dutch lawyer pleading in the Antwerpen court on June 6, 1994 demonstrated clearly that the two men were some two kilometres over the border on Dutch territory when they were driven off their bicycles into a five-foot ditch by the Rijkswacht squad car. To disguise their illegal operation, Rijkswacht personnel transported the two bicycles in the middle of the night into Belgium were they were collected by a police van the following day in full public view. Also, police reports were doctored to "prove" that the incident had happened in Belgium. The lawyer calculated before the court that the two old men must have driven with a speed of 80 kilometres per hour to arrive in time at the location were they were supposedly arrested. The public prosecutor could only suggest that the Rijkswacht had erred due to the bad weather that night. One of the suspects commented: "where has the world come to if even the police can no longer be trusted...".
Sometimes similar incidents caused by the fact that the Schengen agreement is still not in force end in the release of suspects. Last May, two drug couriers were arrested on Belgian soil and subsequently interrogated by French customs officers while still in Belgium. The court ordered their immediate release, as such questioning is at the moment still illegal. A senior official from the Dutch Christian police trade union, Mr P Kruizinga, has voiced concerns over the "hundreds of cases" over the last few years in which investigations and operations have been hampered or have collapsed entirely because of lacking cooperation between Dutch and foreign police forces. According to Mr Kruizinga, many police officers simply don't know what is or is not allowed. They react by crossing frontiers regardless of the consequences or by letting go of investigative leads abroad for fear of making mistakes. Recently Dutch police personnel have even ended up in foreign jails due to gross misunderstandings.