Gelderland District Court acquits: uncorroborated SkyECC chats do not meet the statutory minimum of evidence

On 24 April 2024 the District Court of Gelderland acquitted the defendant of trafficking and preparing to traffic hard drugs and of trafficking soft drugs. The case rested on a police selection of SkyECC messages from an account attributed to the defendant. All evidence came from a single source and nothing outside the chats confirmed that the events they described had taken place, so their content could not be tested and the statutory minimum of evidence (wettig bewijsminimum) was not met. The items offered as corroboration did not suffice: a cannabis plantation for which the case had been dropped, 800 grams of cannabis for which the defendant had already been convicted, and cash found three years after the charged period. The court did not need to rule on the lawfulness of the SkyECC data.