“Look, if I have to continue legal proceedings for another twenty years to view my file, then I will do so. If agencies such as the municipality, the police and the Public Prosecution Service are willing to spend so much time and money to prevent its release, there will be a lot of data that should not see the light of day.”
For Frank van der Linde, Wednesday was the umpteenth court hearing in which he tries to obtain his complete police file. Over the years he initiated hundreds of proceedings, including before European courts.
This year alone there are 38 new appeal procedures. He also advises fellow sufferers who are involved in similar legal issues. Van der Linde, who usually operates without a lawyer, has gradually grown into a specialist in the field of privacy rights. For example, he advises a Muslim who has sued the Dutch state and the National Police. Due to their actions, he has been wrongly labeled internationally as a terrorist, according to the indictment.
Edges of the law
Van der Linde has been a full-time activist since 2013. He focuses, among other things, on racism and the extreme right and fights for the climate and the Palestinian cause. His actions are nonviolent, but sometimes push the boundaries of the law.
In 2017, Van der Linde ended up in the radicalization approach of the municipality of Amsterdam, which at the time was almost exclusively aimed at Muslims with jihadist ideas and plans to leave. This approach consists of government interventions that may be at odds with fundamental rights such as the right to privacy, personal privacy and effective legal protection.
On Wednesday, the court revolved around Van der Linde’s request to have police officers heard under oath. He wants to demonstrate that the police are structurally not operating fairly in his case. A police lawyer strongly denied on Wednesday that this was the case.
When Van der Linde was in Berlin in 2018, the Amsterdam police warned the German federal police about concerns about Van der Linde, in an email message with ‘terrorism’ as the subject. It makes traveling a risky activity for him to this day, although he has no longer been part of the radicalization approach since 2019.
Handcuffs
In the Netherlands, where as a radical left activist he was already in the crosshairs of the security services, he ended up in the police systems as a ‘Cter subject’. Cter stands for counterterrorism, extremism and radicalization and means that someone is being closely monitored. Result: officers became alarmed when they ran his name through the system and quickly deployed handcuffs to arrest him if necessary.
Published more than a year ago Het Parool a reconstruction of the relationship between Van der Linde and the authorities. It led to a council letter in which Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema acknowledged that he should never have been included in the approach because there was insufficient threat of radicalization and possible violence. She announced that she would discuss compensation with Van der Linde. She called Van der Linde’s treatment a touchstone for good governance.
After that fall, a solution seemed near. Van der Linde stopped his one-man protests in the city hall. But now relations have soured again. Discussions about compensation are on the back burner because Van der Linde’s priority lies elsewhere: access to his complete municipal file.
Over the years, new documents have emerged in procedures, with the municipality repeatedly reassuring that the bottom stone had now really been left behind. Last year, Halsema hired an independent outsider – former municipal ombudsman Ulco van de Pol – who had to check the municipal documents to see whether Van der Linde had really received all the documentation and whether too much had been left out. A year later, that process is still not completed.
Access to police systems
Exactly the same issue applies to the police. Van der Linde gradually obtains new information about himself, for which he has to conduct endless procedures. Despite resistance from the police, who fear setting a precedent and consider it undesirable for outsiders to be allowed to pry into confidential data, the Amsterdam court decided earlier this month to give an external expert (a digital forensic expert) access to the police systems.
A remarkable decision, which the court justifies by pointing to the ‘significant differences’ between the documents that Van der Linde initially received and the documents that emerged after procedures. The police deny having deliberately withheld documents, but cannot explain why new information keeps emerging.
The fact that an outsider gains access to police data is unique, says Sven Brinkhoff, professor of criminal procedure at the University of Amsterdam. “The question hangs over the market: has the police provided everything? If not, it doesn’t have to be ill will. There are so many systems that can contain data. But I think it would be a good thing that an outsider would check it.”
Intelligence control
Van der Linde also feels strengthened by the call for better control of an important police intelligence service, the Public Order Intelligence Team (Tooi). Van der Linde has been secretly followed by employees of that team in the past. As a speaker, he once told the municipal council that Tooi could go about his business unchecked.
The council wants to introduce restrictions for Tooi, as evidenced by the unanimous support for an initiative proposal by D66 member Rob Hofland that requires the police to warn someone as soon as they are in the picture of Tooi. Mayor Halsema wants to consult with colleagues in other cities about this.
Van der Linde emphasized once again in court on Wednesday that he is not just doing all of this for himself. “My mission is to do something about the government that structurally withholds documents.”
Tags: activist Frank van der Linde continue litigate twenty years
-
