|
'Turkey Blackmailed Justice Leadership with Demmink'
THE HAGUE, 25/03/14 - Turkey has evidence that former justice ministry Secretary-General Joris Demmink abused children. This evidence was used to force through a life sentence for a Kurd in the Netherlands, says former top detective Klaas Langendoen. In 2002, an appeal court in Den Bosch sentenced Huseyin Baybasin to life for offences including murder, hostage-taking and leading a criminal organisation. He contested his sentence, claiming that tapped telephone conversations had been manipulated by the Turkish authorities to make the contents incriminating for him. Langendoen believes Baybasin’s reading. In exchange for his Dutch conviction with false evidence, Turkey kept information on the abuse of underage boys by Demmink to itself, Langendoen told the district court in Utrecht. A series of witnesses is currently being heard in Utrecht at the request of De Roestige Spijker (The Rusty Nail) foundation. This body is investigating the suspicions that abuse of youngsters by the then top civil servant at the justice ministry was the subject of an active cover-up. Langendoen is a former chief of the Criminal Investigation Service (CID). He bases his conclusion on his own detective work in Turkey. He carried out an investigation at the request of the lawyer of two Turkish victims, who claim to have been abused by Demmink. On Tuesday, former prison director Bart Molenkamp also made an incriminating statement about Demmink. He said that he heard in 1992 from civil servant Anneke Storm that she procured young boys for Demmink. Storm has stated earlier, also under oath, that this is not true. On Saturday, Amsterdam former Chief Public Prosecutor Hans Vrakking had already said in an interview with NRC Handelsblad that Demmink was in fact substantially in the picture in the so-called Rolodex investigation into the involvement of highly placed persons in sex parties with underage boys. Justice Minister Ivo Opstelten was still saying at the beginning of this month that Demmink dit not figure ''in any way whatever” in the investigation. Vrakking was the initiator of the Rolodex investigation at the end of the 1990s. The then secretary-general of the justice ministry, Harry Borghouts, phoned him up with the question “What are you doing,” said Vrakking. Borghouts could not normally speaking have been aware of the very secret investigation, which was subsequently ‘spoiled’, according to the former Public Prosecutor. |
|