Hearing 23 September 2026:

On 23 September 2026, the final hearing took place before the District Court of The Hague, sitting in Rotterdam, in the case concerning the accused’s alleged involvement with IS and his alleged position within the organisation’s security service, the Amni.

The hearing followed the prosecution’s closing argument of 16 September 2026 and was primarily devoted to the prosecution’s rebuttal to the defence’s pleadings.

The prosecution addressed the defence’s arguments concerning the admissibility and reliability of the evidence, the identity of the accused, the alleged participation in IS as a terrorist organisation, the nexus between the alleged crimes and the armed conflict in Syria, the alleged war crimes, and the accused’s alleged leadership position.

The defence subsequently made a limited response to the prosecution’s rebuttal and maintained that the evidence was insufficient to establish the charges beyond reasonable doubt.

The hearing also addressed the accused’s pre-trial detention and the further procedural schedule.

At the beginning of the hearing, it was mentioned that a new interpreter for the accused was present.

The prosecution rebuttal :

The prosecution then delivered its reply to the defence’s pleadings. The prosecutor explained that the reply followed the structure of the defence’s pleadings and was intended to address the principal arguments raised by the defence.

The prosecution argued that several of the defence’s arguments lacked a factual basis or were factually incorrect. It also noted that a number of the defence’s criticisms had already been addressed, at least in part, in the prosecution’s closing argument.

The prosecution first addressed the defence’s request to declare the prosecution inadmissible. According to the prosecution, any procedural violations would have to be sufficiently serious before they could result in such a consequence on the basis of the right to a fair trial.

The prosecution argued that the alleged violations relied upon by the defence did not reach that threshold. Referring to Supreme Court case law and the European Convention on Human Rights, the prosecution maintained that a violation of procedural rights would only justify such a far-reaching consequence where it affected the fairness of the proceedings as a whole. In its view, the defence had not established such a situation.

The prosecution also responded to the defence’s reliance on the presumption of innocence.

The defence had criticised public statements made by the prosecution and the public prosecutor concerning the case. Particular reference had been made to a press release by the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM).

The prosecution stated that it was responsible for its own public statements, but not for statements made by an external foreign NGO such as SCM. According to the prosecution, the statements made by the public prosecutor had also not amounted to statements that the accused was guilty.

The prosecution argued that the public prosecution service was permitted to discuss the suspicion against an accused and the factual basis of that suspicion without thereby presuming guilt. The prosecution therefore maintained that there had been no violation of the presumption of innocence.

It also addressed the concerns that had arisen following statements made by the accused while in detention concerning a possible plan to escape from prison and potentially take personnel hostage. According to the prosecution, discussing concerns arising from the accused’s own statements and conduct did not amount to a violation of the presumption of innocence.

The prosecution further noted that the suspicion against the accused concerned a period of several years. It argued that the scope of the suspicion could therefore not be reduced to the question of whether the accused had merely held a leadership position. His alleged involvement over the wider period was relevant to the proceedings and could be discussed in court.

The prosecution then addressed the issue of anonymous witnesses. It acknowledged that there were several anonymous witnesses in the case file but emphasised that this was connected to the fear experienced by a number of witnesses. The prosecution argued that the existence of anonymous witnesses therefore had to be understood in the context of the investigation into IS.

The defence had also criticised the possibilities available to it to conduct its own investigation and had argued that there had not been equality of arms. The prosecution rejected this argument.

It stated that it would have wanted to hear the relevant witnesses itself if this had been possible. With regard to witnesses connected to SCM, the prosecution explained that they had not been further heard, but that other possibilities had existed to obtain information from them, including audio recordings and other available material.

The prosecution further emphasised that SCM material itself had not been used as evidence against the accused. Consequently, any uncertainties concerning the way in which SCM had operated could not, according to the prosecution, constitute a procedural violation attributable to the Dutch authorities.

The prosecution also addressed practical difficulties encountered during the investigation. It referred to the absence of a legal relationship with Syria and the difficult relationship with Turkey, explaining that witnesses could not simply be sent abroad to be interviewed.

The prosecution further argued that ordinary cooperation between law-enforcement authorities did not necessarily require a formal mutual legal assistance request. When authorities from another country were asked whether they possessed information concerning a particular person, it was for that country to determine how it would respond.

In relation to the material obtained from the FBI, the prosecution stated that the FBI had indicated that the material could be used as evidence in criminal proceedings. The absence of a formal legal assistance request therefore did not, in the prosecution’s view, prevent the material from being used.

The prosecution also responded to the defence’s reference to a partial acquittal in a German case. It argued that the German judgment established at most that the evidence available in that particular case had been insufficient for a conviction.

Moreover, the accused did not appear in the relevant judgment. According to the prosecution, the German proceedings therefore did not establish that the evidence in the present Dutch proceedings was insufficient.

The prosecution acknowledged that the investigation had been complex and lengthy. It nevertheless rejected the suggestion that the complexity of the investigation provided a basis for excluding evidence.

The prosecution then addressed the defence’s criticism of the open-source intelligence material. The defence had argued that the messages and reports were insufficiently clear and reliable.

The prosecution responded that the reliability of the available data carriers had been investigated as far as possible. They argued that the identity of the original persons behind individual pieces of information was not necessarily decisive for their reliability, because the context in which the information had been produced and circulated was also relevant.

According to the prosecution, the journalists who had collected the information were reliable.

The prosecution further explained that four SCM witnesses had only been shown a photograph of the accused towards the end of their questioning and had not seen the photograph beforehand. It rejected the accused’s own explanations concerning his presence in Syria where those explanations were inconsistent with the other evidence.

The prosecution also returned to the SCM report, which had provided the initial impetus for the Dutch investigation. The defence had argued that witnesses might have influenced one another because one witness had referred investigators to another.

The prosecution maintained that this was not inherently problematic. According to the prosecution, it only became problematic if witnesses had subsequently coordinated or aligned their statements.

The prosecution argued that the defence’s suggestion of connections between witnesses was speculative and did not establish that their statements had been agreed in advance.

The prosecution maintained that witness statements could remain reliable even where a witness had been involved with another armed group. It referred to the assessment by the investigating judge and argued that membership of or links with groups such as al-Nusra did not automatically undermine the reliability of a witness.

The prosecution also distinguished between witnesses who had been treated cautiously and those whose evidence had ultimately been rejected.

One witness had given a consistent account of an incident that corresponded with publicly available information. The fact that IS had only been incompletely involved in that incident did not, according to the prosecution, make the witness’s statement unreliable.

Another witness had been involved with an armed group, and the prosecution acknowledged that the evidence had therefore been assessed with particular caution. In that case, the witness’s evidence had ultimately been considered unreliable, and the prosecution stated that it did not rely on it.

The prosecution then returned to the question of the accused’s alleged position within IS. It emphasised that the suspicion concerned the accused’s involvement with IS as a whole.

According to the prosecution, there was no meaningful basis for separating a supposed “terrorist side” of IS from another side of the organisation.

The prosecution argued that the witnesses generally knew that the accused had been part of the Amni, although the precise roles and positions of different individuals within the IS hierarchy were difficult for witnesses to establish.

The prosecution also addressed the metadata associated with the material obtained from the FBI. It argued that the presence of metadata did not mean that the underlying information had necessarily originated from social media.

The defence had pointed to an apparent missing file and an incorrect location in the material. The prosecution acknowledged these issues and explained that the location had subsequently been corrected and provided in a separate official report.

According to the prosecution, these issues did not render the FBI material inherently unreliable.

The prosecution also responded to the defence’s interpretation of a video in which children could be seen. The defence had suggested that because of the children the footage might have been recorded at a wedding.

The prosecution argued that the youngest person on the video was approximately 15/16, and it was not uncommon for IS to recruit boys of that age. There was therefore no indication in the video that it was recorded at a wedding.

It further stated that the accused’s explanation was not reliable and questioned what independent evidence the defence had provided for the suggestion that the footage had been recorded at a wedding.

The prosecution therefore maintained that the FBI material could not simply be dismissed as unreliable.

The prosecution then addressed the defence’s broader criticism of the witness evidence. It emphasised that the statements of anonymous witnesses were supported by other evidence.

The defence, according to the prosecution, repeatedly separated individual pieces of evidence and identified inconsistencies in isolation. The prosecution argued that this was not the way in which courts assessed evidence.

Instead, the evidence had to be considered as a whole, with inconsistencies assessed in the context of the overall evidentiary picture.

The prosecution stressed that both the quantity and the mutual coherence of the evidence were important. It argued that the court should therefore assess the photographs, witness statements, digital material and other evidence together rather than treating each piece as an independent and isolated question.

The prosecution subsequently addressed several specific inconsistencies relied upon by the defence. It maintained that the witness who had described seeing an execution could nevertheless be considered reliable and that the account was plausible in light of the way the accused himself had described relevant events.

The fact that the witness had been wrong about the year of the execution was not, according to the prosecution, necessarily decisive for the reliability of the statement as a whole.

The prosecution also argued that the fact that information was generally known in the relevant community did not automatically make it a rumour. The context in which information had circulated was important.

The prosecution maintained that the accused’s alleged position within IS and the Amni had been sufficiently well known in the relevant environment to explain why information about him had circulated among residents.

The prosecution further stated that the exculpatory statements relied upon by the defence had already been addressed in its closing argument.

The prosecution then returned to the relationship between Dutch criminal law and international criminal law.

The defence had argued that the prosecution had not sufficiently established the connection between the accused’s conduct and the criminal or terrorist objective of the organisation.

The prosecution responded that Dutch and international criminal law differed in several respects and that directly comparing the two systems could therefore amount to comparing different legal frameworks.

Each criminal-law system had its own rules concerning participation. According to the prosecution, the Dutch court should apply the Dutch legal framework and the established Dutch interpretation of participation.

The prosecution subsequently addressed the nexus between the alleged crimes and the armed conflict. It maintained that arbitrary detention had already been addressed in recent jurisprudence and that the concept was broader than suggested by the defence.

The prosecution explained that the system of control exercised by IS and the climate of fear created by the organisation could not be separated from the armed conflict in which IS operated.

It emphasised the distinction between States and organised armed groups: States are sovereign entities, whereas armed groups derive their authority in the relevant territory from the exercise of armed force.

According to the prosecution, the violence exercised by IS and its control over territory therefore could not be separated from the armed conflict. This was relevant to establishing the required nexus.

The prosecution then returned to the issue of passing and executing sentences without prior judgment. It emphasised the distinction between different forms of passing and executing sentences and maintained that three forms recognised in ICC jurisprudence could apply in the present case.

The existence of differences between the Dutch and English versions of the relevant provisions did not, according to the prosecution, make the English version unclear or inconsistent.

The prosecution argued that the relevant provisions had to be interpreted with particular attention to due process and the requirement of a genuine judicial procedure before punishment was imposed or enforced.

The prosecution also addressed Article 7 of the International Crimes Act. It argued that the provision was intended to allow the Dutch legal framework to cover violations of international humanitarian law that were not specifically addressed elsewhere, including developments in future treaty law.

The fact that arbitrary detention had not historically been recognised in the same way did not mean that it could not fall within the scope of Article 7.

The prosecution maintained that the central question was whether detention prior to a judgment had been consistent with the applicable legal rules and procedures.

The defence had argued that the prison known as “the Four” had been used for relatively minor offences.

The prosecution responded that several witnesses who had been detained there had seen the accused at that location. According to these witnesses, the facility was not a minor detention facility and people were detained there in circumstances involving torture and detention without proper proceedings.

The prosecution argued that the defence had not demonstrated why the facility should be regarded as a prison for minor offences.

The prosecution clarified that the accused was not being prosecuted for his personal involvement in each of the individual executions that allegedly took place at the facility. Rather, the prosecution’s case was that he had held a leadership position within the Amni, an organisation in which executions without prior judgment had allegedly taken place.

The prosecution also referred to previous case law and argued that international jurisprudence did not necessarily have to be followed where the Dutch courts had developed their own applicable legal framework.

In concluding its reply, the prosecution returned to what it considered the central question for the court: whether the evidence, considered as a whole, supported the prosecution’s account or the accused’s explanation.

According to the prosecution, the court ultimately had to determine whether all of the witnesses had independently been mistaken about the accused’s involvement or whether the evidence demonstrated that the accused was responsible for the conduct alleged against him.

The prosecution maintained that there were still serious objections against the accused and that the continued detention was justified by the seriousness of the allegations and the resulting concern to the shocked legal order (geschokte rechtsorde).

It therefore opposed the defence’s request to lift or suspend the accused’s pre-trial detention and argued that there remained a basis for continued detention.

The defence :

The defence then made a short response to the prosecution’s reply. The lawyer stated that most of the relevant issues had already been discussed extensively in the defence’s pleadings and that he therefore wished to focus on several specific points.

The defence first returned to the digital material. It argued that the origin of the data carriers remained unclear and that this uncertainty affected the evidentiary value of the material.

According to the defence, it remained uncertain whether the data carriers actually originated from IS.

The defence also questioned the evidence of a witness concerning his alleged detention by IS. It argued that it remained difficult to establish precisely where and when this detention had taken place and whether the witness’s account was factually correct.

More generally, the defence maintained that the witness statements did not meet the standard of proof beyond reasonable doubt.

It argued that the witnesses lacked sufficient certainty and that some witnesses had not been able to identify the accused as a member of the Amni.

According to the defence, the witnesses had described what they believed to be the truth, but their accounts remained subjective.

The defence also argued that the persuasive value of some witness statements had been undermined by photographs of the accused that witnesses had seen before being questioned.

It maintained that this created a risk that witnesses had subsequently identified the accused on the basis of information they had received rather than on the basis of their own memories.

The defence then highlighted what it considered to be a fundamental difference between its position and that of the prosecution.

According to the defence, the prosecution appeared to argue that establishing that the accused had been a leader of the Amni was sufficient for a conviction. The defence disputed this.

Even if the accused had been a leader, they argued, this did not automatically establish that he had committed the relevant offence.

The defence referred to the principle of act-based criminal liability, arguing that criminal liability requires an observable act rather than merely a state of mind or status.

According to the defence, membership of an organisation could also take a passive form and could not by itself establish criminal participation.

The defence further argued that, where a person was alleged to have been a leader, concrete forms of participation should be identifiable.

Examples could include giving orders, communicating with the media, leading meetings or taking other identifiable actions.

In the present case, the defence argued that such concrete acts had not been established.

The defence therefore stated that it would expect clear and observable conduct from someone alleged to have been a security chief within IS.

In its view, the absence of such concrete conduct meant that the alleged leadership position could not, by itself, support a conviction.

The defence also returned to the consequences of the prosecution’s conduct and public reporting on the accused’s private life.

It stated that the public statements and images concerning the case had affected the accused’s family.

In particular, the accused’s daughter had allegedly been bullied because of the images and allegations circulating in the media, and a police report had ultimately been made.

Finally, the defence repeated its request to lift the accused’s pre-trial detention, arguing that the twelve-year ground and the other relevant grounds for detention were no longer present.

In the alternative, it requested that the detention be suspended.

The defence’s request :

The court subsequently ruled on the request concerning pre-trial detention. It decided not to lift the detention.

The court considered that serious objections against the accused remained and referred to the continuing concern to the shocked legal order (geschokte rechtsorde).

The court stated that the accused’s personal interests had been taken into account, but considered that they did not outweigh the reasons for continuing the detention.

The accused was given the opportunity to make a final statement but declined to do so.

The court then suspended the proceedings until 25 November 2026 at 13:00. The hearing on that date will be purely formal and will concern the formal closing of the proceedings.

The judgment is scheduled for 4 December 2026 at 13:00 in Rotterdam.

Disclaimer

This document does not constitute an official court record; rather, it is a summary prepared in collaboration with the Nuhanovic Foundation, based on field notes gathered by its representatives during the court hearings. Please note that this translation is unofficial, published for informational purposes only, and should not be considered an authoritative legal document.