The Netherlands violated international law in the case of a Bahraini asylum seeker, resulting in his deportation and, after a summary trial, a life sentence in his native country. The European Court of Human Rights ruled this on Tuesday. According to the Court, the IND immigration service did not investigate carefully and rigorously whether Ali al-Showaikh rightly feared political persecution and “inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”, as prescribed by European law.
For that reason and because of the “terror” that Al-Showaikh has suffered as a result of the Dutch failure, the European Court orders outgoing State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Asylum, VVD) to pay 50,000 euros in compensation to the deported Bahraini. Al-Showaikh has been in the infamous Jau prison in the Bahraini desert for about five years now, has reportedly been tortured and recently went on a hunger strike with hundreds of fellow prisoners against the appalling conditions (collective punishment, denied medical care, hardly any time outside the prison). overcrowded cells).
The Court does not order Van der Burg to bring back Al-Showaikh, but does order the State Secretary in veiled terms to take “appropriate measures” to ensure that Al-Showaikh’s “rights are guaranteed.” It is a rare invitation for the Court to the Netherlands to consider making diplomatic efforts for Al-Showaikh. According to his spokesperson, Van der Burg will only determine whether the Netherlands will actually do this after more extensive study of the verdict.
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Ali al-Showaikh was not welcome in the Netherlands, he is now in prison for life in Bahrain
Last-minute second asylum request
The European Court specifically accuses the Dutch justice system of having rejected the last-minute second asylum application of the then 27-year-old Bahraini without a substantive assessment. A few days before his deportation, Al-Showaikh tried to substantiate his fear of persecution with a document showing that an arrested compatriot had mentioned his name during a criminal interrogation, but the IND did not investigate this Arabic document because it was copied and untranslated and because the The service suspected that Al-Showaikh only used it to frustrate his deportation.
The Court is wrong to accuse the Netherlands of taking a “too limited approach”. The IND should have assessed this document in terms of content – and in the light of information that Al-Showaikh previously submitted, including about the poor human rights situation in Bahrain. Also because the submitted document was a leaked confidential interrogation that Al-Showaikh could not have simply picked from the internet.
Outraged
The Court’s verdict is a new chapter in the long-running Al-Showaikh case, which has repeatedly caused headaches for Van der Burg’s predecessors. After publications of NRC the House of Representatives demanded clarification and then State Secretary for Asylum Mark Harbers (VVD) promised an inspection investigation. This showed, among other things, that the Dutch ambassador to Bahrain was angry that the IND had failed to obtain information from him. If the immigration service had called, the ambassador would have warned that the Sunni regime in Bahrain is “acting very hard” against critical Shiites such as Al-Showaikh. According to a professor and three university lecturers in migration law, to whom NRC submitted the confidential findings of the inspection, it showed that the IND did not sufficiently investigate how dangerous it was that Al-Showaikh’s brother was an activist leader who had fled abroad.
The father of the deported Bahraini, Mohammed al-Showaikh, has “mixed feelings” about the verdict, he tells NRC. He is “not yet relieved” as long as it is unclear whether the Netherlands will put pressure on the Bahraini authorities, who sometimes apparently arbitrarily grant pardons to political prisoners. Like the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not yet responded to the question of whether that effort will be made, but does emphasize that it has attended Al-Showaikh’s court hearings since the deportation, has repeatedly expressed concerns about a “fair trial and humane treatment” and inquired about Al-Showaikh’s Showaikh’s health. In this rare diplomatic effort – the Netherlands never follows deported asylum seekers – there should nevertheless be no acknowledgment of guilt, the ministry said earlier, but “regular work in the field of human rights”.
It is not the first time that Dutch deportation policy has been criticized legally. In 2021, the Council of State ruled after an investigation NRC to tortured deported Sudanese that the Netherlands should no longer deport asylum seekers from that East African country before conducting a thorough investigation into the risks.