The European Court of Human Rights is blocking Dutch attempts to extradite rejected Afghan asylum seekers who are suspected of war crimes, Dutch daily Trouw reports.
Six Afghans have been sent back to Afghanistan since January 2008, but at least six other extraditions appear to have have been thwarted by the Court.
There are an estimated 350 aliens in the Netherlands who are suspected of having committed war crimes in their countries of origin. Most of them are Afghans who worked for the secret service of the communists regime in the 1980s. They had a reputation for torturing political opponents.
The Ministry of Justice wants to repatriate them, but the European Court in Strasbourg doubts whether it is safe for them to return and is blocking the transfer by a so-called intermediate verdict. It can take a number of years before a definitive verdict will be issued. Meanwhile, the Netherlands will have to provide shelter for the Afghans.
Photo: Mikhail Evstaviev/Wikipedia
Russian forces in Afghanistan, 1980s (Mikhail Evstafiev/Wikipedia)
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