ARNHEM - The criminal case against the four soldiers who were involved in the fatal diving accident in Curaçao was held indefinitely on Friday. This is due to the fact that the Public Prosecution Service came up with new file documents at the beginning of the second day of the session.
The lawyers of the four then asked the court "with pain in their heart" to hold the long-running case. The military chamber of the court granted this request, in the interest of a fair trial.
A colleague of the four soldiers died during a diving exercise on 23 November 2015. According to the Public Prosecution (OM), the four have violated the service regulations, which could lead to a life-threatening situation. This second day of session was to commence with the hearing of two witnesses about those ordinances. The Public Prosecution Service and the defense differ on this.
Just before the start of those hearings, the Public Prosecution Service announced that documents had been found at the public prosecutor's office, including a document in which these witnesses had already given their views on these service regulations. However, not all documents were in the file yet.
The defense was not pleased with this new turn in the case that has been dragging on for five years. "Not amused, bordering on shameless, abject," were some of the counsel's comments.
The court also said it was "unpleasantly surprised". The Public Prosecution Service also called it "not attractive" and offered to select the relevant parts from the stack of documents, so that this selection could be viewed immediately and the interrogations could still continue afterwards.
The lawyers felt that the new documents raised too many questions and caused too much unrest for the case to continue. They emphasized, among other things, that they had not been able to present the content of the new documents to the witnesses who had already been heard on Thursday during the first day of the session.