Counter-terrorism in the Netherlands

'11 September’ has made us painfully aware of the fact that terrorism constitutes a threat to national security. Consequently, counter-terrorism has been put high on the national and international political agenda.

Mr Erik Akerboom, Director Democratic Legal Order of the General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD), wrote an article about counter-terrorism in the Netherlands for the June 2003 issue of the Tijdschrift voor de Politie (Police Magazine).This article sketches (the radicalisation of) Islamist terrorism in the Netherlands and the approach of the General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) of this phenomenon, underlining the great importance of intensive co-operation between the AIVD and the police in this area.

You will find the conclusions of the article below. The entire article can be downloaded on the right-hand side.

Conclusions

  • At the moment we can conclude that the threat of violence represented by Islamist terrorism is growing into a substantial and permanent exogenous and endogenous threat.
  • Radical Islamic individuals and groups in many countries appear to be increasingly successful in convincing moderate Muslims of the fact that the realisation of a society that is in agreement with the ‘pure’ Islam is the perfect solution to injustice in the present society.
  • We have been painfully confronted with the fact that also some Muslims raised in the Netherlands are receptive to radical-Islamist ideas and manipulation. A number of them underwent a radicalisation process and were successfully recruited for the jihad, with the ultimate prospect of martyrdom.
  • Counter-terrorism in the Netherlands is based upon a wide-range approach. This implies that terrorism is not approached as an isolated phenomenon, but in combination with interfacing phenomena of radicalisation and recruitment. In order to enable effective interventions, it is necessary to identify relevant signals at an early stage.
  • Effective counter-strategies are anyway aimed at the following relevant categories: terrorists, supporters, sympathisers and the Muslim community.
  • The combat of Islamist terrorism does not only require great effort on the part of intelligence and security services, police and judicial authorities, but also permanent alertness within other policy fields, like immigration and aliens policy and integration.
  • The identification of terrorist networks and the prevention of attacks are core tasks of the AIVD.
  • The combat of international terrorism requires close co-operation and information exchange with foreign law enforcement and intelligence and security services.
  • Major elements of counter-terrorism are the identification and, if necessary, monitoring of radical cells and networks, as well as the prevention of radicalisation and issuing a timely alert against this phenomenon. Intensive co-operation is essential in this respect (with the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, the Ministry of Justice, the Public Prosecutions Department, the National Police Agency, the Defence Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD), the Royal Military Constabulary, police forces, regional intelligence services, etc.).
  • In view of their role in the investigation and prosecution of offences the police are obviously an important partner for the AIVD in counter-terrorism. But the police can also provide information that helps to identify radicalisation processes at an early stage. The value of this information is mainly based upon the quality of the relations of the police with persons within the Muslim community.
  • The regional intelligence services are the link between the police and the AIVD. The increasing importance of this link may lend even more weight to the recently started quality-improvement process within the regional intelligence services.