Essay: UK and the Netherlands counter-terrorism measures

As members of the European Union, the UK and the Netherlands have focused on many similar aspects in their preventive counter-terrorism measures as responses to home-grown terrorism. In general, nearly all European states adopt the same approach to preventive counter-terrorism policies due to similar cultural base, so their policies are based on a “narrow and immediate interpretation of prevention” against terrorists (Eijkman and Schuurman 3-5). In other words, European countries like the UK and the Netherlands all aim to expose individuals early on who may be radicalizing, and to enforce “a range of policing, judicial and administrative instruments” in order to intercede before an attack materializes and sometimes “even before there is any evidence of planning or material support for acts of terror” within the country’s border (Eijkman and Schuurman 5). The idea is to stop a problem prior to it even beginning, which is why the policies are so preventionist focused.
The first counter-terrorism strategy in which the UK’s policy differs from the Netherlands is the pre-charge detention policy, or the amount of time a suspected terrorist can be held before officially being arrested. In terms of condition to arrest a suspect, the UK’s “Control Orders” indicate that a person who is suspected of engaging in a terrorist act can be imprisoned without trial, whereas the Dutch detainment policy states that no one can be arrested “in the absence of an explicit suspicion of having engaged in criminal activity” (van Riezen and Roex 103, 106). Previously, in the case of the Dutch law, without the legal reform of the 2006 Act of Shielded Witnesses, the police could not search suspects without “concrete suspicion of a crime” (Eijkman and Schuurman 11). Now, the Dutch authorities have more freedom to stop, search, systematically observe someone, or make an arrest with a considerably lower threshold for proof, because it only needs to denote the “indications of a terrorist crime”, instead of the “suspicions of a terrorist crime” (Eijkman and Schuurman 11). Generally speaking, the Dutch the pre-charge detention policies still require more legal grounds to proceed than that of the British since only recently does the detainment measure of the Netherlands not require concrete evidence from the “suspicions of terrorist crime”, while in the UK, a suspect can be arrested without trial.
The UK and the Netherlands also differ in regards to the possible timespan of detainment. Current counter-terrorism laws of the UK allow the police, under certain specified circumstances, to detain the suspect, without charge, for up to twenty-eight days to allow the police “to obtain, preserve, analyze or examine evidence for use in criminal proceedings” (Eijkman and Schuurman 13). UK’s control orders applied to terrorism suspects can also lawfully justify up to a six-month imprisonment with the aim to “protect the public against terrorism” (van Riezen and Roex 106). In the Netherlands, once the suspect is arrested, the authorities are allowed to extend the detainment period for up to ten days without proving that the arrested individual poses “a danger to persons or property” (van Riezen and Roex 106), which is significantly less than allowed in the UK. A unique feature that only exists in the UK’s detainment policy is that while being on trial, if there is deemed to be a large enough threat, the court will receive the authority to give house arrest, assign the defense lawyer, and be deprived of the knowledge about their charges“ (Riezen and Roex 106). This dramatically reduces the rights of accused terrorists, as they do not apply under the same rule of law in the UK. Generally, the detainment policies of terrorist suspect in the UK are stricter in order to justify the its intention of protecting its citizens.
One the explanation for such policy to be enforced in the UK but not in the Netherlands is that being the UK suffers from a history of terrorist attacks on homeland soil. Terrorist suspects are deprived of certain rights by the UK judicial policies in order to further strengthen on the preventive measures. British citizens might recognize the possibility of a terrorist attack more than the Dutch, because they have personally been attacked. They might be therefore more tolerant towards strict policies regarding detainment of potential terrorist threats.
Another application of counter-terrorism policy in which the Netherlands and the UK differ is through the kinds of surveillance policy. When using surveillance and monitoring of the country as a counter-terrorism measure, it is difficult to define a balance between right to privacy and right to safety. Citizens need to be protected but also maintain civil rights. Governments in nations find themselves having to identify the lesser evil—spying on citizens or not noticing homegrown terrorism? (van Riezen and Roex 98). Initiatives between countries, like large-scale biometric databases as developed by the EU (Eijkman and Schuurman 9), are being created by union members to share and collectively watch threats because terrorism is very international.
The national security service in the Netherlands is the Algemene Inlichtingen en Veiligheidsdienst, or AIVD, which is the General Intelligence and Security Service. The AIVD and other organizations are responsible for fighting terrorism, and the preventive strategy relies on surveillance of society to identify possible threats (The AIVD, 2014). In recent years, the Dutch have gradually begun to use more intrusive techniques called ‘care and assistance’, where police officers enter a home or workplace to check for potential terrorist conspiracy (van Riezen and Roex 103). These approaches are less dramatic than instant criminalization, as they promote the idea of constant care and attention from the government but remain a method of close supervision. Additionally, stop-and-search without concrete suspicion of a crime is now possible due the expansion of police authority, which often targets ‘at risk’ citizens (van Reizen and Roex 103-104). A 2006 Act allowed intelligence officers to be witnesses in court, and lowered the threshold for evidence of terrorist crimes (Eijkman and Schuurman 11), which expands the reach of intelligence. Laws are bent or exceptions are made for terrorist risks across the world, in both the Netherlands and the UK. Yet British authorities are required to have even fewer grounds of explicit suspicions before obtaining information about the public than the Dutch (van Riezen and Roex 106), which points to a more radical policy and therefore more questions regarding the privacy of British citizens. Stop and searches can be used by law enforcement without reasonable suspicion, and surveillance cameras are common in public spaces (Eijkman and Schuurman 13). Evidence of the tensions that surveillance causes can be seen through the existence of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000, which needed to specify when and where authorities could use wiretapping, informants, and digital monitoring (Eijkman and Schuurman 14), which are extensive spying techniques.
Overall, the UK has a larger emphasis on using monitoring tactics and intelligence to protect its citizens. Similarly to the reasoning behind stricter detainment policies, the extensive intelligence is likely due to the fact that the UK has had terrorist attacks within its borders multiple times, whereas the Netherlands has experienced no real terror attacks in history. The Netherlands intelligence service has become active in response to international attacks, like 9/11 in the USA or the 2004 Madrid bombings (den Boer 286), while the UK has responded to direct security threat in London in July 2005 (“Countering International Terrorism” 5). The threat of terrorism seems to be more real in the UK, as it has materialized in many attacks before, while it remains just a possibility for the Netherlands.