On October 10, the court in The Hague will rule on the request of the Public Prosecution Service to end 53 outdated criminal cases. The Public Prosecution Service hopes this will create space for more urgent and topical cases, and larger cases, the public prosecutor said on Monday at the start of the series of sessions.
It is an unusual session, the officer said. “Because at this hearing we are going to ask your court to still end cases that we have brought ourselves. That is unusual and in several cases also painful. In all these cases, the police, the Public Prosecution Service and the court are more likely to do so. put in work.”
All cases that come by one by one on Monday “like a train” have been on hearing before. “The Public Prosecution Service therefore has no other option to end the case,” the court chairman explained at the start.
Dealing in drugs
All cases are at least four years old, a number of cases are older than seven years. “For a long time, for too long, these matters have stalled,” the officer acknowledged. “They came at the back of the queue because other cases took precedence: cases involving victims, cases involving minors, cases involving detained suspects.”
The outdated criminal cases include dealing in drugs or growing hemp. The suspects of cannabis cultivation or dealers who were in possession of five kilos of cocaine are “little boys” in the eyes of the OM officer. “We are now dealing with much bigger guys,” the prosecutor said, referring to current crimes uncovered by decrypting crypto messages. “The Public Prosecution Service wants to make more room for these recent drug cases.”
Among the cases that the court will hear all day on Monday, there are also confiscation cases. In it, the Public Prosecution Service wanted to take criminal money from suspects who have already served their prison sentences. In a number of cases this is no longer necessary, for example because the Public Prosecution Service has concluded a financial agreement or because the court on appeal has decided that the criminal profits must be paid out to the victims.