Activists not prosecuted for climate action on secure part of Schiphol

The Public Prosecution Service in North Holland will not prosecute any of the climate demonstrators who entered the secure part of Schiphol on November 5, 2022.

The Royal Military Police (KMar) at Schiphol then arrested approximately four hundred demonstrators who were participating in a climate action against the use of private aircraft. Most activists did not want to identify themselves, or had taken measures to make their identification difficult. For example, they did not have ID or had glue on their fingers that made it more difficult to take fingerprints. The Marechaussee took photos of the demonstrators in order to subsequently identify them with the help of police information and social media.

chief public prosecutorDigna van Boetzelaer We regret that in many cases the identification was carried out carelessly

The Public Prosecution Service states that the identification of ninety people was successful. The ministry was no longer able to determine the correctness of the identification of 64 people. And in nine cases, according to the Public Prosecution Service, there was incorrect or questionable identification. “We regret that in a large number of cases the identification was carried out carelessly and that we did not properly inform the people involved,” says Chief Public Prosecutor Digna van Boetzelaer. She states that the working method surrounding large-scale arrests is being adjusted.

Initially, the Public Prosecution Service sent a letter to 176 people informing them that they had been seen at the action. This turned out to be incorrect for several people. A number of people were able to prove that they had not been to Schiphol at all on the day of the climate action.

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Took too long

With regard to four suspects whom the Public Prosecution Service previously reported that it would prosecute, the justice department has decided to dismiss those cases. Although there is no doubt about the correctness of their identification and the provability of the fact, according to the Public Prosecution Service, the time elapsed until the hearing plays a role, in combination with the limited capacity of the judiciary and the lightness of the expected sentence. In addition, the fact that a substantial part of the research into the identifications did not go well or is no longer verifiable played a role.

A spokesperson for the Public Prosecution Service said that facial recognition technology was used in twenty cases (via CATCH: Central Automatic Technology for Recognition of Persons), but that no one was recognized using this system.

This technology is only used to compare photos of faces with those in the police database. This is the same database in which fingerprints are also included. This image bank also contains police photos of previously arrested suspects. “This technology does not look at other databases, websites or other external sources,” the Public Prosecution Service said.

Insufficiently careful

A photo was taken of all arrested demonstrators before they were sent away. The KMar carried out further investigations to determine the identity of the demonstrators who could not be identified by means of identification or fingerprints, based on the photos taken. Both closed sources (such as police information) and open sources (such as social media) were used for this purpose. “These investigative actions have not been recorded with sufficient care and they should have been. For example, it is not recorded by which KMar employee, at what time and on what grounds a person was identified,” the justice department said.

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