Kevin Sweeney - Netherlands

Kevin Sweeney has been in prison in the Netherlands since February 2001, but his fight for justice goes back to 1995 when he was accused of killing his wife in a house fire.

The fire, which was limited to his wife's bed, strongly suggests that death occurred from smoke inhalation after a fire was started accidentally, for example by a cigarette. Indeed nothing suggests that a third party started it;

• The house was locked and bolted from the inside;
• Witnesses at the scene, including two policemen who were within two metres of the supposedly explosive and raging fire did not see such a fire,
• Kevin had an alibi for the time when the fire was actually seen by witnesses
• There was no evidence of arson.

After spending 10 months in prison, Kevin was bailed pending trial. A month later, he was tried and acquitted. The prosecution appealed and Kevin was due to be re-tried in 1997. However the prosecution did not want to proceed at this stage, so Kevin returned home. The prosecution then conducted a series of tests, which independent experts have declared as scientifically flawed. The magistrate in charge of the tests was removed when it was discovered that she had instructed the experts to do whatever it took to make the results look the same as the photographs of the actual fire. Unbelievably, these test results were still used in evidence.

The re-trial continued in February 2001. Ten days before the trial, the President of the Court telephoned Kevin’s lawyers and assured them that there was no need for defence witnesses to be called or prosecution witnesses to be cross-examined. The judge said that pleadings should be kept to a minimum, leading them to believe that the original acquittal would stand.

At the trial the chief prosecution witness, the head of the police forensic team, was unable to give evidence due to mental illness. The judges therefore requested that Kevin's lawyers present his defence first. The defence had barely started when the President of the Court stopped them, suspended the trial and cleared the court. This happened just as Kevin’s lawyers were submitting that the police had fabricated the only item of forensic evidence that might have suggested arson. The prosecutor was then told to put forward her case, which Kevin's defence team was not allowed to contest.

He was convicted and sentenced to 13 years imprisonment.

The President of the Court and the other two judges refused to produce a written verdict, without which Sweeney could not appeal against his conviction to the Dutch Supreme Court. After seven months Sweeney was driven to go on hunger strike to try to obtain the written verdict. He finally received it, allowing him to appeal to the Dutch Supreme Court. He lost this appeal.

Kevin's case was taken to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg. Barrister Henrietta Hill of Doughty Street Chambers, London, prepared his application with the assistance of Fair Trials Abroad. Unfortunately, the ECtHR rejected Kevin's appeal as, in their view, not all domestic remedies had been exhausted. An application will now be made to take the case back to the Dutch Supreme Court.

Fair Trials Issues

1. Kevin was interrogated intensively for more than 200 hours over a 2 week period in such an intrusive, oppressive, intimidating and humiliating manner, that he eventually suffered a nervous breakdown.
2. There was no evidence suggesting that the fire had been started deliberately, yet Kevin was arrested, investigated and charged.
3. After the prosecution decided not to proceed with the appeal in 1997, it took some 3½ years before Kevin was summonsed back to the court of appeal. His rights to legal certainty and to a hearing within a reasonable time were therefore violated.
4. The Ministry of Justice published a proclamation to say that Kevin had been found guilty months before the Supreme Court made their final decision. Then the Supreme Court Prosecutor issued a statement that the appeal had been declared inadmissible before the Supreme Court Judges had made their decision.