Wilders, No! Criminals, Yes!

Our Flemish correspondent VH has translated an article from Reformatorisch Dagblad about the failure of the city of Amsterdam — which is so eager to prosecute Geert Wilders for insulting Islam — to apply the law to illegal immigrants who commit multiple crimes:

Criminal Moroccan brothers may stay in Amsterdam

Two criminal Moroccan brothers from the Slotervaart district of Amsterdam do not need to be afraid anymore that they will be deported to their homeland. State Secretary of Justice Nebahat Albayrak [PvdA, Socialists] last month withdrew an appeal on the case, said her spokeswoman this Wednesday.

The brothers are part of the “Piet Mondrian Group“, a criminal group of 30 to 35 Moroccan street-youngsters between 12 and 17 years of age (in 2008), who are all well-known to the police and the “neighborhood fathers” [called by some “sharia police” — translator], and of whom 80 percent do not have a Dutch passport. The group mostly hangs around Piet Mondrian Street [map] in Amsterdam-Slotervaart. They commit burglaries, robberies and car arsons. They are regularly sentenced for their crimes, but start all over again every time. Elsewhere in the district other groups like this one are also active.

Last year quite a bit of commotion arose about this case. Amsterdam wanted to expel the brothers, because they were part of a criminal group. The men had been living in the Netherlands for over fifteen years, but had no Dutch passports. Moreover, their residence permits had also expired (in 2006).

Still, the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND) stated that they did not have enough evidence against at least [sic] one of the brothers to designate him as an undesirable alien. Usually the IND only deports criminals who hold a residence permit and have resided in the Netherlands for less than five years. Because the brothers had forgotten to renew their residence permits in time, the police from that moment on were of the opinion they could be counted again, and after further breaches of the law they were subsequently declared undesirable aliens.

“Nothing will help these guys anymore,” the municipality and police believe. “In Slotervaart all kinds of activities are organized for youngsters, precisely to keep them from misbehaving out on the streets. But for this group: no more projects, trips to Morocco, and other pampering,” said Marcouch. “These creeps can only be dealt with by means of criminal law”.

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GreenLeft parliamentarian Tofik Dibi [himself a Moroccan and sympathizer of the International Socialists] who grew up in the same neighborhood in Amsterdam, was totally against the deportation plans for the brothers. “That these guys are just thrown over the border, I find to be an admission of failure,” On top of that, according to Dibi, Marcouch is interfering in the efforts to get the brothers to go straight. “We know that they are no sweeties, but they are not only perpetrators but also victims of family tragedy and the failure of government bodies […] It is understandable that the police seek radical measures as youth repeatedly break the law, but these guys grew up in the Netherlands, their problems emerged here, and they have violated Dutch law. So now you must fight that here, and not by throwing them over the fence into another country.”

One of the brothers was arrested for deportation in April 2009, the other “was not at home,” the police spokesman Rob van der Veen stated. The police were also not actively looking for him. He was registered as an undesirable alien and was arrested when the police “encountered him somewhere” by a fluke.

Following this, Nebahat Albayrak announced [in April 2009] a proposed bill in which foreign nationals who are serving sentences and must be deported may be released earlier when they indicate [sic] that they will return to their country of origin [nothing heard of since —translator]. A few days after her announcement, it became known that one of the Moroccan brothers in the meantime had already received a new residence permit. This was the result of a lawsuit against the IND.

One of the two Moroccan brothers [still unclear which one of the two, but most likely the one that was not in hiding] had also started a legal proceeding against his stay in custody to await deportation to Morocco. The court in The Hague then ruled that both brothers should not be deported because the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND) could not prove the consistency of the data that had been used for the “undesirable alien declaration”.

The IND, for instance, had declared that one of the brothers would have already have been eligible for an undesirable alien declaration when he committed a crime in 1999, and according to the IND at that time he had a residency status of just one year and three months.

The State Secretary of Justice, Nebahat Albayrak [Turkish and Dutch national] has now withdrawn the appeal against the ruling, because according to her the case has no chance of success. The lawyer for the two Moroccans, Martijn Strooij, refused to comment on the issue. He has agreed with the brothers not to talk with the media.

Chairman Ahmed Marcouch [PvdA, Socialists] of Amsterdam-Slotervaart called the failure to expel the two “a disappointment for society”. In the past he had argued for their deportation. The PvdA member said he was pleased that his appeal has contributed to Albayrak and Minister of justice Ernst Hirsch Ballin being willing to make it easier to reject the residence permit of multiple offenders.

“All over Amsterdam, but also in the rest of the country, neighborhoods are plagued by these kinds of criminals,” Marcouch said. “So I find it unacceptable that one conducts a raid on a cigar shop in the morning and in the evening receives a stamp with ‘welcome’ on it.”

One in five illegal immigrants who should be deported from the Netherlands are not deported because they [manage to] frustrate the process. This emerged by April 2009, in the Annual Report of the Commission on Integrated Monitoring of Returning (CITT).

According to the chairman of the of the CITT, Hans Gualthérie van Weezel [former VVD parliamentarian, center-right]), the authorities lack a sense of urgency. He noticed that too many flights [with deportees] have had to be canceled. Too often the paperwork was not in order or the deportee arrived too late at the gate. Over one hundred illegals in a year’s time applied again for asylum at the last minute, after the flight was already booked. He also stated that the Balkenende government does not make very much of an effort to remove unwanted aliens from the Netherlands.