Netherlands: Inquiry into police team
01 November 1994
Journalists Bart Middelburg and Kurt van Es of Het Parool newspaper published a book "Operation Delta" on 21 October in which they detail how in 1993 the IRT (Interregionaal Recherche Team, an inter-regional semi-permanent detective squad shut down in December 1993) allowed a key informant (a shipping agent) to export very large shipments of up to several thousands of kilos of Ecstacy and Colombian majaruana to the UK, Belgium, Scandinavia, and Latvia, in most cases without keeping control over further distribution of the contraband on the markets. The Dutch justice department was largely kept in the dark about the operations as were all foreign officials. Only when UK Customs and Excise in Sheerness discovered a tank lorry loaded with 1.5 million Ecstacy pills and their liaison officer in Holland began to ask awkward questions were they briefed about the nature of that particular shipment, thus narrowly avoiding an diplomatic incident.
Also on 21 October, the Van Traa parliamentary commission, set up in June 1994 after the IRT disaster forced two ministers to give up office, published its findings on whether or not there is a need for a full parliamentary investigation into the working methods of the police. The commission concluded that such an investigation ("parlementaire enquete") is required because of the present vagueness and confusion about which methods are allowed and which are not.
Commission members believe they have obtained information on about 85% of all the covert intelligencegathering methods presently in use; the report gives a comprehensive but superficial overview of them. Tactics and techniques such as the application of electronic location devices, "fishing" in private mail boxes, the clandestine monitoring of conversations in houses by use of the telephone and the wide and "creative" use of criminal informers and infiltrators have all been reported to the commission. It appeared that those public prosecutors known to be reluctant to use sensitive methods were avoided by police detectives who in such cases sought out more sympathetic prosecutors to give formal backing a practice referred to as officer shopping."
The commission stresses that it will be necessary to interview witnesses under oath, since several justice and police functionaries they questioned were thought to have withheld information or dodged sensitive issues. Also the commission wants to come to a reliable assessment of the actual level of threat of organized crime in Holland, since the various experts that were consulted held widely diverging views on this issue. Parliament is expected to decide soon whether or not the commission's recommendations will be carried out.