Dutch gov't ignoring available information to avoid compensating Hawija victims: report
The Dutch government will not compensate the victims or surviving relatives of a Dutch bombing in Iraq because it does not have enough information to determine who suffered what damage from the attack, then-caretaker Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans said in January. That is not the case, investigative journalists from Investico, BOOS, and De Groene Amsterdammer discovered. According to them, mountains of data are available, including some repeatedly offered to the government.
In June 2015, Dutch F-16s bombed a building in the Iraqi town of Hawija, where the terrorist organization Islamic State was manufacturing bombs. The airstrike caused a massive explosion that wiped out an entire residential area, killing at least 70 civilians.
A Dutch committee investigated the bombing and concluded that the Ministry of Defense relied too much on American information and did too little advance research itself before deploying the fighter jets. Defense gave no consideration to what would happen if the Dutch bombs detonated the explosives in the targeted factory.
In January, then-caretaker Defense Minister Brekelmans traveled to Iraq to personally apologize for the bombing and speak to the victims’ loved ones. During that visit, he announced that the Netherlands would give an additional €10 million for the reconstruction of Hawija, among other things. But individual victims would not get financial compensation.
According to the Minister, the Dutch government did not have enough information to determine who suffered what damage, and there was no local authority that possessed the necessary information.
Not true, the investigative journalists discovered.
The province where Hawija is located has a compensation office established to compensate victims of military and terrorist violence in Iraq. This office also possesses information regarding the Hawija victims. The Dutch government never contacted that office.
The Iraqi NGO Ashor, which assists victims in Iraq, also built a database containing information on the victims, working with Utrecht University and the Dutch peace organization Pax. “We have data on more than 300 victims in total,” Ashor director Mohammed Al-Bayati told Investico. “People who have lost family members, been injured, or lost their possessions.”
According to Al-Bayati, he contacted the Dutch government, offering to share the database multiple times, but never got a response from the Ministry of Defense.
Minister Dilan Yeşilgöz of Defense told the three Dutch media that it is “the freedom of the State” to choose how to compensate victims. She provided no further explanation as to why the government decided not to compensate the victims in Hawija.
When asked why the government did not use victim data from Ashor and the compensation office in Iraq, the Ministry told the investigative journalists that this data does not meet “the legal standard” and lacks “legal certainty regarding causality.” The Ministry repeatedly did not answer questions about what exactly that legal standard is.
