ARNHEM - The four soldiers who were involved in a fatal diving accident of a colleague during an exercise near Curaçao were acquitted by the court in Arnhem on Tuesday.

The Public Prosecution Service (OM) suspected the four of violating official regulations, which could lead to a life-threatening situation. However, immediately after the end of the criminal case, the military chamber of the court concluded that those regulations did not apply under criminal law at the time of the fatal diving accident on 23 November 2015.

Earlier in the day, the OM had also requested an acquittal for the same reason. The military officers had been accused of violating official regulations by not aborting the dive when voice communications stopped working.

The prosecutors spoke of "an unsatisfactory conclusion" of the case and called the course of the criminal investigation "not nice", also given the long duration and the bickering about the nature of the charges.

The military did a mining exercise in the Caracas Bay in Curaçao on November 23, 2015. The colleague made a dive to about 40 meters. When it took too long for her to surface, a rescue operation was started, but to no avail.

It is still unclear what exactly happened. The woman was no longer wearing her diving gear when she was surfaced. According to the pathologist, she died of asphyxiation, but the cause of this has not been established.