
Six arrested after 'Dutch torture chambers' found - tomcooks
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53325388
======
jacquesm
Rotterdam is one of the largest transshipment points for containers in the
world and is also one of the largest drugs transit points for Europe. Crime
there is relatively heavy compared to other dutch cities.

[https://www.erasmusmagazine.nl/en/2019/11/14/why-there-
are-r...](https://www.erasmusmagazine.nl/en/2019/11/14/why-there-are-record-
cocaine-busts-in-the-port-of-rotterdam-again-and-again/)

The largest bust this year iirc is 2000 KG in a single container from Latin
America, street value well over 100 million, decoy was a load of bananas.

~~~
colechristensen
Off-topic, but it's hard to get the right feeling about the valuation given in
drug busts. They say 100 million, but nobody actually lost that much money or
paid that much money, and the drugs will just be replaced. The "wholesale"
value of the drugs at that port may well have been 1/1000th of the quoted
street price or less.

You get the impression that they like showing off big numbers, but it's
difficult to be convinced that it ultimately makes a big difference, or even a
positive one.

~~~
PedroBatista
These "valuations" are important because they put a number on the whole "chain
of value". Of course nobody would paid 100 million for that shipment, just
like they didn't paid 80 million for the drugs.

But you sure can bet if those drugs were bought and consumed, around 100
million would change hands ( total ), 10 million more 10 million less.. it's
an estimation.

~~~
heavenlyblue
If they catch 5% of the market cocaine, then those 100 million would not have
changed hands because if they didn’t catch those 100million worth of cocaine
that cocaine overhead would never have been shipped.

It’s not like people would suddenly start consuming more cocaine if police
would stop seizing it.

~~~
PedroBatista
They would, just like they'll consume less if prices go way up. It's a
relatively common occurrence these "shortages", but all of this to a point,
people wouldn't consume triple the amount if there was 3x cocaine available.

No one wants the streets to be flooded with cocaine, and I mean - no one -
There's a reason why cartels are called cartels.

------
the-dude
Strange there are no pictures. Here is some footage :
[https://www.nu.nl/281820/video/politie-geeft-beelden-van-
bra...](https://www.nu.nl/281820/video/politie-geeft-beelden-van-brabantse-
martelkamer-vrij.html)

~~~
1123581321
I would not want to finish my life in there. It's sad to think how many people
around the world may currently be in something like that.

~~~
jacquesm
At a guess this was a V2, and V1 still exists and operates.

------
himlion
Interesting that so many fellow Dutch people being surprised "that kind of
stuff can happen over here". They seem to forget we're the main worldwide
exporter of XTC and a huge distributor for other drugs.

~~~
AQuantized
I don't think people would be surprised for the Netherlands to be associated
with drugs, but would be more so for violent crime.

~~~
himlion
I should have made it more clear I indeed mean the association with the
violent crime.

the sentiment I've heard a lot is people see the drugs as a business and the
violent, ruthless sides of it are something that mostly happens in Latin
America like you see on "Narcos".

~~~
mercer
Interesting. Nobody I know is surprised by this stuff. Maybe it's because
we're in the Randstad area and aware of the strings of liquidations that have
been happening in Amsterdam? Not to mention the recent high-profile arrest of
Taghi who grew up near Utrecht.

------
hatmatrix
I suppose on this thread we should be wondering how encrypted chat (that can
also be wiped/self-destructed) can be decoded?

~~~
superhuzza
Sounds like some kind of malware was distributed to the phones via compromised
EncroChat servers.

I wouldn't want to be one of the EncroChat employees/distributors right now.
Their client base seems pretty dangerous, and probably pretty pissed off right
now.

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/07/police-
infiltrat...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/07/police-infiltrate-
encrypted-phones-arrest-hundreds-in-organized-crime-bust/)

------
Scoundreller
More terrible things brought to you by the criminalization of drugs.

This doesn’t happen in the coffee or sugar business.

~~~
sdinsn
> This doesn’t happen in the coffee or sugar business.

Uhhh, are you joking? Slavery is still found in these industries to this very
day.

Organized crime too- for example, cartels in Mexico have moved to extort
Avocados from farmers because it has better margins than drugs...

~~~
Scoundreller
Show me the torture chambers _today_ in coffee and sugar. Just 1.

> Avocados [...] has better margins than drugs...

They don’t. If you steal/extort $anything though, the margins get really good.
If you switch from drugs to extortion, it’s because you got cut out of the
cartel or law enforcement got too distracted by drugs making other crime more
attractive.

Criminalization of coffee or sugar would only worsen the poor treatment of
labourers in their cultivation areas. The crop might change though.

~~~
madvoid
Coffee: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/the-
hidden...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/the-hidden-
suffering-behind-the-brazilian-coffee-that-jump-starts-american-
mornings/2018/08/30/e5e5a59a-8ad4-11e8-9d59-dccc2c0cabcf_story.html) Sugar:
[http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/01/09/brazil.slav...](http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/01/09/brazil.slavery/index.html)

I do not believe your implied claim that decriminalizing drugs would prevent
this sort of behavior is correct.

~~~
Scoundreller
Brazil’s definition of slavery is much broader than the one you’re thinking
of.

> In Brazil, slavery is defined as forced labor but also covers debt bondage,
> degrading work conditions, long hours that pose a risk to health, and any
> work that violates human dignity.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-coffee-
slavery/pic...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-coffee-
slavery/picked-by-slaves-coffee-crisis-brews-in-brazil-idUSKBN1YG13E)

Their “slaves” are generally people with poor alternatives with a side of
government corruption/ineptness.

~~~
madvoid
"Generally" could mean what you mentioned, or it could mean straight slavery -
as the article said there is not good stats. Forced labor is prevalent in many
industries, using the US definition of slavery:
[https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ILAB/ListofGoods.pdf](https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ILAB/ListofGoods.pdf)
Your original claim was that decriminalizing drugs would prevent this sort of
behavior. I think the linked report shows that is not necessarily true.

------
tibbydudeza
We have vicious gangs here that control the drug trade but they are happy to
take potshots at each other and when there is a serious disagreement they take
out each others leadership.

But this kind of brutal violence like a torture chamber and the stuff that you
see in Mexican drug cartels (ISIS type of debauched executions) is on way
another level.

It is actually bad for their business you would think.

~~~
bilbo0s
A French friend of mine, long ago in college, was actually on Interpol's list
of wanted criminals for a while. He slipped into the US, (have no idea how),
and has lived a crime free life here ever since.

One thing he told me after living here in the US for a while was that
Americans tend to believe violent crime in Europe is lower than violent crime
in the US because they can easily compare the homicide rates. Whereas people
like him know that you don't compare murder for murder, you compare murders in
the US, to "missing" people in Europe. His sense was that there was actually
far more violent crime in Europe at the time, just far fewer living witnesses.

The discovery of this "shipping container" kind of "jibes" with that long ago
street-level assessment.

~~~
jacquesm
Nice theory. The big differentiator for homicides is simply the number of
firearms floating around in the United States. That's an enabler if there ever
was one and violent crime is to some extent a natural outflow of that.

When the former USSR collapsed and the war in former Yugoslavia happened cheap
arms flooded the market here and that caused an immediate rise in gun related
crime. The fact that in the EU countries that neighbor each other can have
very different gun laws is another reason why since the Schengen area opened
up in some countries there are now substantially more guns than before. They
are still illegal, but criminals don't actually care since they are already on
the other side of the line and their competition has them too.

There have been shootouts between gangs with fully automatic weapons on the
streets of Amsterdam (fortunately not many), and the police has also come
under fire from gangs with machine guns during getaway attempts or murder
attempts.

I am not sure if they will be able to put this genie back into the bottle. The
gangs here are a lot harder this decade than they were 20 or 30 years ago,
there are more of them and they are far more ruthless. Some samples: heads
left in front of businesses to warn others about territory violations, murders
of people who looked alike some criminal or drove the same car in broad
daylight, parents slaughtered in front of their kids or in the schoolyard.
It's not what it used to be, that's for sure.

~~~
ColanR
> war in former Yugoslavia happened cheap arms flooded the market here and
> that caused an immediate rise in gun related crime

As long as we're talking theories, was it the guns coming in or the people
coming in that cause the rise in crime?

~~~
jacquesm
A mix of both. Ex Yugo army set up shop in and around Amsterdam bringing
manpower and weapons and collaborated with existing dutch crime rings who
supplied money and local expertise. This is all fairly well documented now.

------
jandrese
The EncroChat bust has proven so profitable for police it makes you wonder if
it wasn't a setup the entire time.

Some agency creates a service marketed specifically for criminals, waits a bit
for users to sign up and start using it, then "oops we had a design flaw" and
all of the criminals who bought the service are scooped up in the aftermath.

~~~
jacquesm
It wasn't, if it was then Encrochat would not have warned its users they had
been compromised on Jun 13th.

~~~
jandrese
The jig was already up at that point, and it gave the entire thing a veneer of
plausibility.

~~~
jacquesm
Sure... well, let's just say that if and when the founders of Encrochat turn
up in small pieces I wouldn't be surprised at all and that could simply have
been the one shot they had left at hopefully getting out of this alive.
Pissing off a very large number of people that have zero problems with killing
your and/or your extended family is a career limiting move if there ever was
one. Sleep with the dogs, wake up with fleas. Or not wake up.

------
vmception
Rotterdam ports seem like the sketchiest place in Western Europe. It really
comes across as a den of pirates but with modern buildings and.

So many traders with phantom product and other bullshit, a huge useless
blacklist of LLCs that people can just spin up anywhere in the world at any
time.

And a torture chamber in the port because the "encrypted chat" everyone was
using was not encrypted anymore?

~~~
whataboutist
>And a torture chamber in the port because the "encrypted chat" everyone was
using was not encrypted anymore?

The containers were located in a rural area. Read the article.

~~~
vmception
still Rotterdam metro, the least relevant point of my post then

~~~
LeChuck
It's not even close to the Rotterdam metro area.

------
jakub_g
Interesting video at the bottom: the Android devices that boot like normal
devices, then you can reboot into a shady mode; and in shady mode, when the
phone is locked and you unlock with "special" PIN, the phone goes into
destroy-all-data mode.

~~~
brian_herman__
We should make this for regular people to use!

------
ed25519FUUU
Honestly, if the police are going to out themselves as having cracked the
encryption of a major crime tool (thus making it worthless in the future),
stopping the usage of custom-built torture chambers is a pretty good reason to
do it.

~~~
jacquesm
It was blown, if not for that they would have been happy to continue the
operation. Once the criminals figured out they had been compromised the
operation was effectively over, Encrochat alerted their users to destroy the
devices. After that it is obvious there would be a mop-up operation.

------
knodi123
So why wouldn't a chamber like this just be delivered, and then watched? It
feels like the dutch cops arrested somebody for the crime of transporting a
torture chamber, and the people who were actually planning to use it get off
without a hitch.

------
say_it_as_it_is
800 arrests. That's quite a syndicate. The torture chambers are probably the
tip of the iceberg.

------
ed25519FUUU
That's stomach churning footage of those chambers. Have we always been this
evil, or are we becoming something new?

~~~
the-dude
Would you rather be pulled apart by four horses?

~~~
ed25519FUUU
I know that's a rhetorical question, but I would personally choose being
ripped apart by horses than spirited away to a torture chamber and tortured to
death.

~~~
function_seven
But keep asking yourself the similar rhetorical questions until you land on
something that's hard to choose between.

The methods of torture devices centuries and millennia ago are just as
horrifying as what you see here. Crucifixion for starters. Brazen bull.
Breaking on the wheel. Etc.

No, this isn't new. What _is_ new is that this is more rare than it used to
be. (At least, I think/hope it is. I might be wrong). We just need to continue
on that path.

------
aaron695
This reeks of fake.

Normal mix of media and police increasing the busts importance.

I would guess the 'sound proofing' is to hide drugs.

The scapel and shears were for gardening.

And the dentist chair, both a scary real life tool and common movie prop was
about just that, being scary. Or they were bored and had a dentists chair.

This quote isn't even tied to this gangs bust, but they included it just to
mislead you.

"Threats detailed on the site included acid attacks and chopping off limbs"

~~~
Udik
Half thought the same. Why would a criminal gang need a torture chamber in a
container? Isn't any basement (and old chair) good for that? And why multiple
ones, how many people do they need to torture _exactly at the same time_? Is
there a booking system in place like for meeting rooms?

One possibility is that they're props, good to give a good scare to those who
might think of scamming the criminals.

~~~
mercer
If you're a hardened criminal, why would you go through all the trouble of
setting up a torture chamber and not really _want_ to use it!?

