Ministry vows review off all jails after deadly fire

The Justice Ministry began reviewing safety at Dutch prisons today, a day after the Netherlands’ most deadly fire in a decade killed 11 immigrants awaiting deportation at a detention centre outside Schiphol Airport.

All but one of the victims have been identified, but their names and nationalities would not be released without permission from the victim’s families, who were still being notified, airport police spokesman Rob Stenacker said.

Hundreds of cocaine smugglers, mostly from the Caribbean and Curacao, are detained at the airport every year, as are immigrants caught trying to enter the country illegally and rejected asylum seekers. Prison cell capacity was greatly expanded in 2002.

In a parliament debate last night, Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner promised a full and independent investigation of the fire. He said his first impression was that the prison complied with safety regulations.

Several members of parliament questioned whether the prison could have been safe enough.

“If 11 people died, then by definition it wasn’t handled correctly,” said Lousewies van der Laan, a member of Donner’s governing coalition. “It’s simply unacceptable.”

The fire started in a cell just after midnight and quickly spread, raging for three hours. Fifteen people were injured, including firefighters and airport police. Four people were sent to hospital.

Police were trying to determine the cause, and officials would not comment on reports that a detainee started the fire.

Five detainees escaped in the confusion. Hundreds of others were bused to prisons in nearby cities.

About 350 people were being held in the Schiphol complex when the fire broke out, and 43 were in the wing that caught fire.

Around 50 protesters gathered outside the airport yesterday evening to demonstrate against the government’s immigration policies. Others planned to bring candles and flowers for a silent wake Sunday night.

The Netherlands’ centre-right government, elected on promises to be tough on crime and immigration, is in the process of deporting some 26,000 people whose applications for asylum were rejected. Some have been in the country for many years.

Human rights roups have criticised the move, saying some people have been deported to countries where they were not safe from persecution.

A fire prevention institute reviewed safety procedures at the prison after a 2002 fire in which 25 cells burned, though nobody was injured.

The Dutch Institute for Fire and Disaster Prevention said in a statement Friday that it made a number of recommendations that apparently were not followed, including installing a mechanism to open all cells at once in case of an emergency.

“If all the recommendations in our report were followed, the chance of a fire with a large number of victims is slight,” the statement said.