The Possible Prosecution of Geert Wilders

Our Flemish correspondent VH has compiled a report on the multiple concerted attempts by various people and organizations in the Netherlands to have Geert Wilders prosecuted for his unacceptable opinions. There are many within the current Dutch government who would love to see this happen, if only a way could be discovered to legally accomplish it.

VH begins with a translation of an article in NU.nl, and then follows it with his own compilations from various Dutch media sources:

Court considers prosecuting Wilders

The court in Amsterdam will decide this year about a prosecution of Geert Wilders on the basis of discrimination. This is what the Court wrote to lawyer Els Lucas. The former PvdA [Labor] candidate for the City Council of Lelystad filed complaints against Wilders several times. Wilders is also invited to the Court to tell his story, the letter states.

In July a special discrimination department of the Public Prosecutor decided not to prosecute Wilders for a number of expressions done in the media, and in his film Fitna.

Els Lucas and two other parties [one of them René Danen’s Netherlands Admits Color] have filed an appeal against this decision. The appeal will be dealt with this year.

The judiciary have received dozens of complaints against Wilders in recent years. These concerned statements in the newspapers De Volkskrant, De pers and in internet columns. In these, according to those who filed the complaints, he had discriminated and encouraged hatred. The complaints are being collected in Amsterdam and viewed by the National Expertise Center Discrimination (LECD, Landelijk Expertisecentrum Discrimination [used to be “Diversity”]) of the Public Prosecutor.

The LECD advised against proceeding with a prosecution. Some experts consulted also felt that Wilders could not be prosecuted on the basis of his statements. The Public Prosecutor followed this advice at the end of June. Lucas by then had already announced that he would bring this decision before the Court.

Note:

In Jordan Wilders is already being prosecuted along with eleven Danish cartoonists. “The charges include defamation and violation of online publishing laws,” according to Mr. Tarek Hawamdeh, a lawyer for some 30 Jordanian media outlets which filed an official complaint earlier this month seeking court action against Wilders. “Punishment could be up to three years in jail. Wilders has been summoned to appear before the court. He will be given 15 days to comply, otherwise, an arrest warrant might be issued through the Interpol,” Hawamdeh said.

All Jordan now has to do is wait for a friendly European nation to use the European Arrest Warrant and call Interpol.

Adding:
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Wilders compared the Koran with Mein Kampf in his opinion piece and advocated a ban on the aforementioned holy book (in the Netherlands Mein Kampf has already been banned, by a Socialist/Christian Democrat coalition in the early 1970s).

“I find that goes too far. It is also unacceptable that a parliamentarian expresses himself in such a way,” said Els Lucas in her fistful of seconds of fame. But she objected to the scope of the entire article. Therefore on August 8, 2007 she went with a copy of the article and a pile of web-quotes and texts in her suitcase straight to the police station.

Haroon Raza on that cold and drizzly August day also went straight to the police offices: “Incitement to discriminate against a population group and incitement to hatred, discrimination or violence.”

Raza based his complaint on a number of statements of Wilders, including the most recent about banning the Koran.

Also on that pre-autumn August day, Parliament responded with outrage over Wilders’ article. The VVD (Liberals) said: “Wilders is completely off the road!” The Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Verhagen (CDA) said: “He reaches the very edge of decency!”

Somewhere else in the Netherlands, Abdeljamid Khairoun of the Dutch Muslim Council said: “Wilders suffers from a religion-syndrome!”

Then Cardinal Ad Simonis also intervened: “Too absurd for words. The idea! Every word spent on this kind of proposal is one too many!”

Lucas and Raza were in good company: Saudi-Arabia, the only country with strict apartheid (Mecca), demanded an apology to Muslims and ordered Wilders to take back his comments. Wilders said he would not even consider it: “Are they completely mad? It is scandalous that a country that does not recognize freedom of speech is telling me what to do? They had better learn that as an MP here you are allowed to say what you want.”

Iran found it “a direct insult to the holy and ethical values of Islam.” And had to restrain themselves from calling him a warmonger and accusing him of violating the universal Declaration of Human Rights. That came later.

The Dutch Internazi René Danen (former squatter, environmentalist with links to the ultra-leftist RaRa terrorists, Militant Trotskyite, Anti-Fortuyn movement founder, International Socialist, Anti-Wilders demonstration organizer with links to GreenLeft, Socialist Party, etc.) filed a complaint as well. But he is known for wanting to become the Dutch Honecker and did not really surprise anyone. But he’ll be an interesting Tribunal case if there ever is any.

In between all these urgent matters, Geert Wilders had to file a report about a suicide attack threat: “Two young men reportedly planned to shoot the politician down and detonate a van full of explosives next to the politician. Many innocent people were to die in the chaos.” But Geert Wilders is not Els Lucas, nor René Danen, and thus receives real threats for breakfast, lunch, dinner and apéritif.

Next in the queue was Gerard Spong. A well-known lawyer, who thrust himself into it during a Leftist TV show by a Leftist presenter and a ultra-Leftist student, Timo Eekland. This Timo Eekland was exposed as being a stereotype Dutch product of ’68 hippies. Apart from admiring Bin Laden and hoping for “200 aircraft crashing into the White House and the Pentagon at the same time,” he also had told friends: “We, the elite of the students” can handle it, but the problem is “the dumb masses.”

The Foundation Netherlands Moroccans (Stichting Marokkanen Nederland, SMN), also joined in with Lucas and filed a complaint based on “instigating hate and/or offending Muslims.”

Finally, the article by Wilders led to 44 filed complaints, while Mohamed Sini (GreenLeft, International Socialists) founded a “Movement against Wilders”, and the “Netherlands Admits Color” of René Danen announced an anti-Wilders demonstration with Amnesty International and a high official of Unilever, Doekle Terpstra, that led to even more Anti Movements.

In January 2008 it came out that the police were advised to show flexibility in dealing with complaints made, following the release of the upcoming film by Wilders. Complaints could also be filed if there was no firm evidence of a criminal offense at all. The preprinted complaint forms were an idea of Bert Poelert of the National Expertise Center Diversity (LECD), a division of the Police Academy. He also told the country’s police chiefs that there should not be any attempt to arrest angry Muslims, even when they set cars ablaze.

For convenience, the Police had pre-printed and pre-filled out multiple choice complaint forms ready for confused Wilders haters after the release of The Film. Even though complainants had only to fill in the author of the film, the title of the film, tick what hurt the most, and add their own names and addresses, only a few dozen filed it.

Els Lucas was again one of the first.