High Council annuls travel ban again

November 27, 2008 4:30 AM

The High Council has annulled the travel ban for convicted drug traffickers again yesterday because the current Antillean legislation does not permit such a travel ban.

Last year November, the High Council already found that this special condition is inadmissible in the imposed suspended sentence in light of the treaty provision of the European Convention on Human Rights (EVRM) and the freedom to travel which is incorporated in it. The verdict entails that passports are thus not allowed to be confiscated.

In April of this year, the Antillean court, on appeal, still condemned a courier to a suspended sentence, with a travel ban outside the Antilles. Her passport was confiscated, but the woman was still able to travel to the other four islands and Aruba with her personal ID. However in the interest of the law, the Attorney General at the High Council, J.W. Fokkens, has instituted a reversal of judgment on September 9 of this year against the verdict of the 22nd of April. Fokkens ordered that the verdict shall be annulled. The reason being that in November of last year, the High Council had already judged the special condition of a travel ban to be inadmissible. The core deliberation of the High Council finds that imposing such a condition, partly in light of the various treaty provisions, is inadmissible because, looking at the duration and the extent to which it limits the freedom of movement of the culprit, it cannot be considered a condition which promotes good behavior of the sentenced person. For such a drastic breach of the freedom of movement, a regulation needs to lie at the base and meet the essential requirements of recognizability and foreseability. “The Antillean criminal law does not meet these requirements at the moment.”

The annulment of the court’s verdict by the High Council yesterday, does not have any consequences for the convicted courier. In the pourvoi dans l’intérêt de la loi the Attorney General at the High Council received this power of authorization in cases for which there are no normal legal means. Such cases are presented to the High Council to answer certain legal questions, with the aim to promote the legal unity and the legal development.

The measure of the travel ban stems from the case of judge Bob Wit. Thousands of passports have been confiscated since July 2004 and given back after the travel ban had matured. The amount of couriers drastically declined with this measure. The travel bans applied to couriers who were caught with an amount up to a few kilos followed by a suspended sentence. This thus also applied to those who perhaps smuggled a few dozen grams, if not for personal use. Lawyers criticized the fact that their clients still received a travel ban of two years for such a small amount. Every two weeks the so-called Hato hearings takes place in court. The confiscations of passports not only applied to Dutch passports. Foreign couriers were denied entry for several years.

Public Prosecution’s Office announced new policy
The Public Prosecution’s Office will announce its new policy regarding drug couriers and their passports on Monday. So reports the Public Prosecution’s Office today after the verdict of the High Council yesterday. On Monday a Hato-hearing will take place. The confiscation of passports is furthermore incorporated as a special condition in the concept-amendment of the Penal Code. However, that amendment has been waiting to be handled by the States for approval for quite a while already.

(Source: National newpaper Amigoe)

26 November, 2008