International Crimes before Dutch Courts: Recent Development

In the early 1990s, two former members of the Afghan secret service applied for a residence permit in the Netherlands. Their request was denied on the basis of the exclusion clause of Article 1F(a) of the Vienna Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. There were serious reasons for suspecting that the men had committed war crimes during the Afghan civil war of 1979–92. In 2000, the immigration authorities transmitted the files of the two men to the public prosecution office, which initiated prosecutions in 2003. At the trial, defence counsel raised various preliminary challenges. They a... Mehr ...