NETHERLANDS: Border controls (1)
01 January 1991
NETHERLANDS: Border controls
artdoc August=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.
Statewatch, Vol 4 no 4, July-August 1994