On 14 November, the Radboud Law Clinic will be screening the documentary Your neighbour’s son: the making of a torturer. The documentary dramatizes the recruiting and training of a young men into the Greek police during the 1967-1974 military junta rule. Seemingly decent young men are selected based on traits viewed as exploitable by the recruiters coming from anti-communist families, young and male. The film interviews Michailis Petrou, one of the Greek policemen involved in the tortures who brought the case to court while accusing he trainers to have transformed him into a torturer. Petrou's testimony reveals that the training methods themselves were brutal and often torturous and was viewed as a necessity to ensure the robotic and brutal obedience of the trainees. The documentary shows that people can be trained to become torturers.
The documentary is followed by a discussion by prof Alette Smeulers, Professor in International crimes at the University of Groningen. Alette Smeulers has studied perpetrators of mass atrocities for over 30 years and is the author of Perpetrators of mass atrocities – terribly and terrifyingly normal? (Routledge 2024) which was recently also published in Dutch: Angstaanjagend normaal (Alfabet 2025). She wants to share this knowledge as she believes that understanding the true nature and causes of these crimes and understand who the perpetrators are and why they commit these crimes, we are in a much better position to prevent such crimes. Besides publishing extensively in international academic journals, Alette shares her knowledge with a wider public by giving interview for radio, websites, journals, websites and magazines such as such as De Groene Amsterdammer, Wordt Vervolgd and Psychologie Magazine and by writing op-eds for newspapers such Trouw. She regularly gives public lectures such as recently in Paradiso, Amsterdam in the series Science & Cocktails, the Asser Institute, the Police Academy (min 53-83) and at Studium Generale. Together with Nicola Quaedvlieg she made a podcast series on perpetrators of mass atrocities called Terribly and Terrifyingly Normal? It can be found on all major podcast platforms such as Spotify and Apple Podcast.
Interested in attending the event? Please send a message to ricky.vanoers [at] ru.nl (ricky[dot]vanoers[at]ru[dot]nl).
