Netherlands: Raid on left press
01 January 1997
In the morning of 11 December 1996, in the village of Vaals, ten local police-officers, a top officer from the Maastricht court, two LKA (Landes Kriminal Ambt) German officers and two BKA (BundesKriminalAmbt) German officers raided a house searching for material on a leftwing newspaper Radikal.
The 16 German and Dutch officers said the search warrant had been issued by German authorities in Karlsruhe. During the two hour raid two personal computers, floppy-discs, photos, a pamphlet and some Radikal stickers were seized.
The search warrant said the purpose of the raid was to search for "Radikal publications, subscribers lists and financial information". A "suspect" was charged with the preparing and distributing Radikal - a newspaper that is forbidden only in Germany and is entirely legal in the Netherlands.
For over a decade, a group of German activists who produce the paper have been working in virtual asylum in Amsterdam, where under the name of the "ID-Archiv" based in the world-famous International Institute for Social History (which holds the archives of among others Marx, Bakunin and many once-persecuted political activists) they have published a range of books and brochures on the history of the German "urban guerrilla" over the past 25 years and political repression in Germany.
The practice in the Netherlands has been not to prosecute anyone for voicing political opinions, unless they are of a racist nature or directed against the monarchy. Actions against "printing press offences" are seldom recognized in Holland and there have only been a few of these prosecutions since the 1970s.
Mr Hoekstra, the investigating magistrate said his intervention was because the search could be part of what in fact constituted a political prosecution. He stated in a letter to the public prosecutor that this could be a prosecution by the German authorities because of the political views of the suspect (in which case the Dutch public prosecutor is not allowed to collaborate), or that the explicit approval of the minister of justice was required (which is the case in cases of prosecution of political crimes).
Minister of justice, Mrs Winnie Sorgdrager, told MPs that the chief public prosecutor in Maastricht had acted wrongly in allowing the house search, since there was no punishable act under Dutch law. In a case like this, the chief public prosecutor should have consulted the minister first. The Minister also concluded that the German authorities' suspicions against the student in question "can not be seen as concerning punishable acts of a political nature or as facts in relation to that." The confiscated documents will not be forwarded to Germany, but have to be returned to the student.
"German Cyber-Raids in the Netherlands", press release, 14.12.96, Solidarity group Political Prisoners, PO box 3762, 1001 AN Amsterdam, The Netherlands; and newspaper report.