Bandidos Motorcycle Club (BMC) Europa and the Dutch
organisation Bandidos Motorcycle Club Holland had gone to court to appeal
against a Utrecht court decision to ban their organisations two years ago. In
that ruling, judges banned the motorcycle club with immediate effect in order
to ‘halt behaviour which could disrupt society’.
The appeal court judges upheld
the ban on the national organisation but said the ruling ‘does not apply to
other, independent Bandidos chapters in the Netherlands because the public
prosecution request was not directed at this.’
The group’s lawyer Marnix van
der Werf said on Tuesday that the appeal court ruling was a victory for the
group. ‘Nothing has changed and the individual Bandidos clubs remain legal,’ he
said. ‘People from the various clubs have ‘Holland’ on the back of their
jackets but Bandidos Holland is not a real association.’
Sittard
The organisation has been operating in the
Netherlands since 2014 and has chapters in Sittard, Nijmegen and Utrecht. The
public prosecution department began trying to have motorcycle clubs banned in 2007
using criminal law, but that backfired after the Supreme Court ruled in 2009
that the department had failed to properly establish that the Hells Angels
formed a criminal association.
In September, the public prosecution department
has asked judges in Assen to ban the motorcycle club No Surrender, arguing that
the group is an outlaw gang and involved in drugs and other crime.
SOURCE: Dutch News