Dutch PM to be questioned in espionage case against counter-terror office staffer
Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof will be summoned before the Rotterdam District Court in the criminal trial of an intelligence worker suspected of leaking state secrets to Morocco, the court said on Friday. The case concerns 65-year-old Ab el M., a former employee of the National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security (NCTV), who was arrested at Schiphol Airport in October 2023 when he tried to fly to Morocco with a large number of data storage devices.
Schoof was previously the head of the NCTV. The current head, Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg, was also confirmed as a witness in the case. They may be able to testify about “the internal view of the suspect’s position in the organization, and the suspect’s access to - and handling of - state secrets and confidential documents,” according to an explanation of the decision which was delivered on Friday.
The hearings will be before the examining magistrate, and will not be open to the public. Members of the news media will also not be able to attend.
The suspect, El M., was accused of a plot to bring information stored on the data carriers to the Moroccan intelligence services. He was held in pre-trial detention for nearly 20 months, until the court decided to conditionally release the suspect earlier this week.
According to the court, “the personal interest of the suspect in his release has now come to outweigh the interest in criminal proceedings.” The court also indicated that it still views the accusations against El M. to be serious and credible, but that he may await further developments outside of jail, because the investigation in the criminal case will probably take a long time.
El M. has always denied the allegations. “I have not handed over state secret information in any way, to anyone,” he said during an earlier hearing. Furthermore, he has mostly remained silent about the charges. According to his lawyer, this has to do with the duty of confidentiality that he swore to uphold as an NCTV employee.
