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Netherlands: Ultra-secure prison to get its own courtroom

A courtroom will be built within the Extra Secure Institution (EBI) in Vught, where the country’s most serious convicted criminals and suspects are detained.

Judges there will be able to handle the sessions of criminal cases, reducing the need to transfer detainees to courthouses elsewhere in the Netherlands. The small courtroom within the walls of the penitentiary will cost 15 million euros and is already under construction, wrote Legal Protection Minister Franc Weerwind in a letter to the Tweede Kamer. The courtroom on site should reduce the risk of a violent breakout attempt or assassination attempt when suspects are transported to a trial.