The justice department, the police and the Judicial Institutions Agency (DJI) have set up a so-called Detention Intelligence Unit. This service is intended to prevent criminals from remaining active in prison, or, for example, from having items delivered illegally. The Algemeen Dagblad reported this on its website on Wednesday.
Image: a prison in the Netherlands
Prevent
The unit was established to prevent criminals from being able to order crimes while in custody. An important reason was the fact that Ridouan Taghi could continue to manage his criminal organization from the extra-secure prison through his cousin Youssef, also his lawyer, the newspaper said.
The fact that the main suspect in the Hedel extortion case, Ali G., could continue to give orders for attacks on a fruit company was also a reason for establishing the unit.
In addition, they focus, for example, on activities with drones, which are used to smuggle things into prisons. This includes mobile phones and drugs. They also want to keep rival groups apart in the institutions.
Vague
Jirko Patist is a public prosecutor at the National Public Prosecution Service who is responsible for the Detention, Security and Counterterrorism portfolio. He explains in which cases the investigation team will intervene. ‘It is of course not the case that once a criminal is in prison, he simply stops his activities.’
But until now, when information has been exchanged between the prison system, the police and the Public Prosecution Service, it has often remained very vague, according to him: ‘The prison staff then picks up a conversation from a detainee in disguised language. They can sense that everything stinks. But if the information remains so unclear, no police team will work on it.’
Suspicion
It is precisely in these types of situations that the new DIU unit should provide a solution. ‘So that you can add information from the police and the Public Prosecution Service to it and thus form a serious suspicion. One on the basis of which you can start an investigation. Because then you can really make a difference,” Patist said on AD.nl
