Dilan Yesilgöz does not worry about it: legalizing hard drugs. The outgoing Minister of Justice and Security (VVD) has “no time for this kind of thing philosophical discussions”, she once said. In her own words, she is too busy combating drug violence and threats from the underworld that undermine the rule of law. She is the first minister of justice since 1815 without a legal background, which was mainly criticized by lawyers when she took office. “Being underestimated is a good starting point,” she repeated frequently during interviews.
As a politician, Yesilgöz presents himself as a hardliner law and order. Criminals must be punished more severely, and rehabilitation, if necessary, becomes even more difficult. As a minister, she said she had to get used to the fact that she cannot express herself about everything. Nevertheless, she is one of the most outspoken and therefore visible ministers.
The budget of the Ministry of Justice and Security will be discussed in the House of Representatives on Wednesday and Thursday. A significant part of the almost 18.5 billion euros is spent on the asylum file (more than 4 billion euros). But this year the outgoing cabinet will also spend more than 112 million extra on monitoring and protecting people who receive threats from the underworld. The total costs of combating organized crime are unclear, the most recent estimate assumes 3.2 to 4.1 billion euros per year.
Minister Yesilgöz has been fiercely criticizing criminal organizations for two years now. Working visits to Colombia, Italy and the United Arab Emirates should show that she attaches importance to reforms, increased sentences and new partnerships. The promise that this emanates is that the approach she has in mind will bear more fruit than that of her predecessors.
‘Narco state’
Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema has spoken out several times in the past two years in favor of “an alternative strategy” against organized crime, although she knows that there is a lack of political support for this. That lack of support is embodied by Yesilgöz. “The Netherlands is in danger of becoming a narco-state,” Halsema wrote last month in the British newspaper The Guardian. She wants a “fundamental change of course”. She advocates the legalization of cocaine and cannabis to undermine the revenue model of criminals. At the end of January, Halsema organized an international one conference on drug regulation. Yesilgöz was invited, but did not come.
Anyone who listens carefully to the Amsterdam mayor will hear criticism of Yesilgöz’s continued Dutch drug policy of stricter penalties, more powers for investigative services and more police capacity (80 percent of which is spent on tackling drug criminals). According to the Amsterdam mayor and criminologists, all this has not led to the desired results.
The Ministry of Justice and Security is one of the toughest departments. The department at the Hague Turfmarkt is also known as a place littered with banana peels. Former ministers Ivo Opstelten and Ard van der Steur resigned because of the Teeven deal, a controversial settlement in which convicted drug trafficker Cees H. received previously seized money (4.7 million guilders) back from the Public Prosecution Service.
In recent years, her predecessor Ferd Grapperhaus lost permanent authority after he flouted the corona rules during his wedding party. It is great that Yesilgöz has not made a major slip, say several sources with whom NRC spoke for this story. But there is also criticism from police experts, criminal lawyers and MPs, who prefer not to be named, for example because they do not want to jeopardize their cooperation with the minister.
What is the impact of the repressive Dutch drug policy, they wonder, when there is little to indicate that the business model of drug criminals is suffering from the policy?
More and more drugs are being intercepted in the ports of Rotterdam and Vlissingen, which is being presented as a success by investigative services and the minister. In absolute kilos this is indeed the case, but at the same time these interceptions do not affect the availability of cocaine. The street price has been stable for years and the quality of cocaine sold in the Netherlands is even increasing. And more drugs are being grown in Colombia and Peru, according to international figures.
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Crown witness arrangement
Yesilgöz does not want to know about an alternative approach. Shortly after taking office, she hinted that she wanted to expand the key witness scheme, so that “smaller fish and helpers” would also talk to the police about their clients in exchange for a reduced sentence. Her proposal caused a stir because the Dutch Safety Board (OVV) was still investigating the implementation of the current crown witness scheme, the results of which were published in March last year.
Yesilgöz won praise for dismantling the money-consuming multidisciplinary intervention team (MIT) set up by Grapperhaus after the murder of lawyer Derk Wiersum. The team was tasked with striking a blow against organized crime, but achieved virtually nothing. However, the team was not completely abolished, but ‘converted’ into the National Cooperation against Subversive Crime (NSOC). It is unclear exactly what this organization does: the evaluation will start soon.
While Yesilgöz is usually good at finding the media, it took six days for her to issue a verbal response to the damning OVV report on the crown witness scheme last March. The report accuses the Public Prosecution Service of giving more priority to tracking down Ridouan Taghi (main suspect in the Marengo trial) than to protecting endangered people. Yesilgöz announced a thorough reform of the system.
She did not consider resigning, but she did apologize on behalf of the cabinet to the relatives of the murdered brother, lawyer and confidant of the key witness. The top of the Public Prosecution Service also stayed on.
It is difficult to discern exactly what the proposed reform entails. Even after the presentation of the so-called Italy approach in early July 2023, lawyers and MPs continued to wonder what Yesilgöz is doing now. The Letter to Parliament in which she explained her plans, turned out to be an anticlimax after two years of big words. In addition to higher penalties for serious drug crimes, Yesilgöz announced a new crown witness scheme and the rules regarding witness protection will most likely be made into law. Although it remained unclear what exactly Yesilgöz has in mind. However, it is also seen as a good sign in The Hague that the new proposal is taking a long time: something like this must be designed carefully, they say.
Manslaughter
At the same time, Yesilgöz caused irritation with her plan to impose higher sentences for serious drug offenses. Scientists and lawyers doubt whether this will deter criminals, who will at most be forced to increase rewards for smugglers and extractors. Scientific evidence is used by “virtually no one” at the Ministry of Justice and Security, it was previously revealed research from the University of Twente on behalf of the department. “Political dynamics prevent the use of knowledge,” the researchers concluded in March 2022. Yesilgöz endorses the results of the report, she wrote to the House.
But is that really the case? For example, the maximum prison sentence for manslaughter is increased to 25 years, an offense that she linked to “ruthless settlements” in the underworld. Only: manslaughter is committed “in a strong impulse of mind”, says lawyer Job Knoester. Settlements in the criminal circuit count as murder because they are planned. Lawyers see this as proof that it is not necessarily advantageous that the Minister of Justice is not a lawyer. Yesilgöz presented the increase in the sentence, which was introduced under Grapperhaus, as a victory, because the ‘punishment gap’ between murder and manslaughter has become smaller (from fifteen years to five years). Knoester believes that the minister should pay more attention to the social benefits of ‘smarter punishments’, which are not only cheaper but also promote rehabilitation.
In his eyes, Yesilgöz is more of a minister of security than of justice. He and other lawyers see with dismay how the legal protection of suspects and convicts is being weakened under her. Jaïr Schalkwijk of police watchdog Controle Alt Delete sees that Yesilgöz is not a strong advocate for human rights as ethnic profiling in the dossier. The Royal Military Police received last year in higher appeal to be told that it is no longer allowed to carry out checks based on skin color. Schalkwijk sees that the police have included the statement in their policy, but that officers on the street do not adhere to it. He blames Yesilgöz for “not speaking out against ethnic profiling.” Schalkwijk: “The minister should intervene, because the police are not doing enough against it. It is a social problem in which human rights are violated.”
‘Oh stop it’
At the beginning of this year, Yesilgöz was declared the biggest privacy violator of 2023. According to Bits of Freedom (a privacy rights organization), she deserves this dishonorable prize because she does nothing for Dutch people who are wrongly included on international terror lists. This would involve at least eighty people, mainly with an Islamic background. A Dutch-Moroccan man discovered last year that this can cause major problems. He was detained for two months during a holiday in Spain. Unjustified, it became apparent soon after the arrest.
Despite constant parliamentary questions, Yesilgöz did not take action. Dutch people must take action themselves to get their names off terrorist lists, she wrote in a letter to Parliament.
The formation that collapsed on Tuesday, where Dilan Yesilgöz, as VVD leader, negotiated a new cabinet with the PVV, NSC and BBB, was also about the protection of the democratic constitutional state and the Constitution. When she was asked in December whether she had brought the Constitution with her to such a meeting, she could not suppress her irritation. “Oh, stop it, I am the Minister of Justice and Security, what do you think?”
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