A Slap on the Wrist

Last year a Muslim zealot in Switzerland threatened Filip Dewinter, the Flemish politician and Vlaams Belang leader, with death. The perp was eventually caught, tried, and sentenced — to 46 hours of community service.

Here’s the story from the Austrian magazine Unzensuriert. Many thanks to Hermes for the translation:

Filip Dewinter threatened with death: Mini-sentence for Islamist

Threats and violent attacks against the Vlaams-Belang-Politician Filip Dewinter are part of his everyday life. The criminals get usually mild sentences.

A 33-year-old Salafist from Geneva who threatened the Vlaams Belang Politician Filip Dewinter with death has been sentenced by a criminal court in Antwerp to 46 hours of voluntary social work and a fine of €275 on probation plus one euro as moral compensation. He must do the social work in a center for the support of integration.

El Chazoini Lishssin, a Salafist Muslim from Dubai, announced in September last year that he and his brothers would kill Filip Dewinter and his wife. Lishssin pronounced the death threats against the leader of Vlaams Belang on the same day that the Islam-critical party was holding a demonstration against the planned building of a mosque at Ground Zero in New York on the day of the 9th [sic — would be 10th, if the dating is correct] anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Because the threats seemed to be serious, Dewinter lodged a complaint with the police, which led to the tracing of Lishssin.

The criminal court of Antwerp determined the full veracity of the facts and also found that there was neither self-defense nor any other exculpatory factor. Dewinter himself, although pleased with the verdict of the court, was not satisfied: “48 hours of social work and a fine of €275 is a ridiculous sentence. These kinds of death threats are not acceptable. The final goal of it was to intimidate and silence a politician through death threats,” the Flemish politician said. This kind of sentence has no deterrent effect. The minimal sentence is almost an incentive to repeat such death threats, Dewinter opined after the process. The loose punishment stands in blatant contradiction to the “zero-tolerance policy” against Muslim extremism announced by the minister of justice Annemie Turtelboom.