Scheveningen prison near the Hague in the Netherlands holds prisoners for the the UN International Criminal Court. Some of those inmates think that Dutch food served in the prison is a form of torture.
“My rights are not being violated, but the food is an abomination,” declared former Liberian president Charles Taylor when he was brought to trial at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in Scheveningen in 2006.
Taylor, who was accused of crimes against humanity and orchestrating war crimes carried out by militias, was used to his own personal cook who made spicy African meals.
Unable to adjust to Dutch culinary blandness, he set up a cookery club using the facilities at the Scheveningen remand centre.
Yes, inmates are allowed to cook for themselves, but they have to buy their own ingredients from the prison shop.
Extreme Serbian nationalist and former paramilitary leader Vojislav Seselj is another notorious prisoner who slams the Dutch diet. Seselj, who was charged by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) with crimes against humanity, arrived in Scheveningen in 2003.
During one of the hearings in his trial, he publicly castigated the remand centre’s menu. The food was “a daily torture. Even pigs wouldn’t go near it.”
Prison officials defend their menu as “healthy and balanced.” Just one more reason you shouldn’t commit crimes against humanity.
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