Two former Afghan military intelligence officials will go on trial in The Hague on Monday on charges of committing human rights violations including execution and torture during the 1980s.
Habibullah Jalalzoy, 59, and Heshamuddin Hesam, 57, who both deny the charges, arrived in The Netherlands during the 1990s seeking political asylum, which they were denied.
They stayed in The Netherlands and were arrested in late 2004.
The two will be tried under a law that allows the Dutch justice system to prosecute asylum seekers for war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in their home countries.
Hesam was the head of Afghan military intelligence from 1983 to 1991. After a reorganisation he became secretary of state attached to the security ministry before being sent as a military attache to Moscow.
Jalalzoy was the head of a unit charged with interrogations within military intelligence under the communist regime from 1979 to 1992.
Human rights groups say more than 200,000 people were tortured by the Afghan secret service during that period and about 50,000 of them died.