Dutch justice minister David van Weel told reporters on Friday that he is unaware of any attacks by Russians on Dutch trains during the Nato summit, as claimed by a former US general.

Former military chief Ben Hodges told reporters at a security conference in Lithuania this week the roof of the train he was in “exploded” on the day of the Nato summit.  The same thing happened at “five different places between Schiphol and The Hague and Utrecht,” Hodges said.

“Those are not teenagers. Somebody orchestrated attacks on the rail system in the Netherlands… this is from the Russians,” he told reporters.

Van Weel told the Telegraaf on Friday afternoon that as justice and security minister at the time of the summit, he was on top of what was going on. There was a power disruption and a fire which affected services but no evidence that Russia was involved, he said.

“The only thing I can think of is that he [Hodges] had heard about these… and then romanticised it,” the minister said.

No idea

An NS spokesman told Dutch News earlier that the two departments which would deal with such incidents have “no idea” what the general is talking about. “We do not recognise the situation he is describing,” the spokesman said.

There were some problems on the railways on June 24, the first day of the summit, and two trains travelling from Utrecht to The Hague were stranded because of a break in an overhead power cable.

There was sabotage involved in a separate incident on June 24 which did affect trains from Schiphol to Utrecht and Amsterdam, but not to The Hague. That involved an arson attack on the track in the early hours of the morning.

There was no evidence that a “foreign organisation” was involved, police said at the time.