Three soldiers persecuted for a deadly diving exercise

The prosecution will prosecute three soldiers for a diving accident in November 2015 in which a 23-year-old sailor died in Curacao. That's what the prosecution said on Monday. According to the public prosecutor, the three "service regulations were violated, which could lead to a life-threatening situation". It's a 49-year-old woman, a 51-year-old man and a 44-year-old man.

The sailor lost his life during a mine control exercise in Caracas Bay on Curaçao. She dipped to about 40 meters when she announced that water was flowing in her mask. Beyond that, voice communication has fallen. It was decided to switch to communication via the signal line. At the end of the dive time, the sailor did not respond and launched a rescue operation.

Contact

The Attorney General accuses the three suspects of not having interrupted the exercise after the loss of voice communication, which should have been done in accordance with the instructions for service. They also reportedly had insufficient contact with the diver.

The defense concluded in June, after an internal investigation, that errors had been made during the preparation of the exercise. Although the researchers were unable to find an unequivocal cause of the accident, the mistakes made "unnecessarily increased the chances of the accident". For example, the exercise had no structure and the structure was insufficiently prepared and the difficult dive was started with "a dive system that was not ready for use". The management was also "aware of the underwater situation that threatened its life" only at a late moment when the sailor had encountered problems due to the loss of communication.