[D66] Gladio: NATO-complot in Nederland

[Dr. Marc-Alexander Fluks]

Bron:  WikiPedia
Datum: 18 juni 2025
URL:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio


Netherlands
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Speculation that the Netherlands was involved in Gladio arose from the 
accidental discovery of large arms caches in 1980 and 1983. In the 
latter incident, people walking in a forest near the village of 
Rozendaal, near Arnhem, chanced upon a large hidden cache of arms, 
containing dozens of hand grenades, semiautomatic rifles, automatic 
pistols, munitions and explosives. That discovery forced the Dutch 
government to confirm that the arms were related to NATO planning for 
unorthodox warfare.

In 1990, then-Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers told the Dutch Parliament that 
his office was running a secret organisation that had been set up inside 
the Dutch defence ministry in the 1950s, but denied it was supervised 
directly by NATO or other foreign bodies. He went on to inform that 
successive prime ministers and defence chiefs had always preferred not 
to inform other Cabinet members or Parliament about the secret 
organization. It was modelled on the nation's World War II experiences 
of having to evacuate the royal family and transfer government to a 
government-in-exile, originally aiming to provide an underground 
intelligence network to a government-in-exile in the event of a foreign 
invasion, although it included elements of guerrilla warfare. Former 
Dutch Defence Minister Henk Vredeling confirmed the group had set up 
arms caches around the Netherlands for sabotage purposes.

Already in 1990, it was known that the weapons cache near Velp, while 
accidentally 'discovered' in 1983, had been plundered partially before. 
It still contained dozens of hand grenades, semiautomatic rifles, 
automatic pistols, munitions and explosives at the time of discovery, 
but five hand grenades had gone missing. A Dutch investigative 
television program revealed on 9 September 2007, that another arms cache 
that had belonged to Gladio had been ransacked in the 1980s. It was 
located in a park near Scheveningen. Some of the stolen weapons, 
including hand grenades and machine guns, later turned up when police 
officials arrested criminals John Mieremet and Sam Klepper in 1991. The 
Dutch military intelligence agency MIVD feared at the time that 
disclosure of the Gladio history of these weapons would have been 
politically sensitive.

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