beginning Today, the merits of the criminal case against Geert Wilders. The defendant himself is not there. A statement of the PVV leader. He refuses to work on what he called “a political process”. The legal battle is so provided by his lawyers. The outcome will be decisive for the political debate in the Netherlands.
the battle between the lawyers of Wilders and the Public Ministry will focus on the question of whether Wilders during the election campaign in 2014, his statements about less Moroccans in a certain context, did. In other words: had Wilders on all Moroccans, or a limited group of, for example, criminal or nuisance-causing Moroccans.
this is about the interview that Wilders gave on the market in The Hague. He said: “most Important is for the people here on the market (…). For those people we are doing it now. Voting on a safer and more social, and in any case a city with less expenses and if it is also less Moroccans.”
Offended
A week later, he asked a PVV meeting in a Hague cafe: “I ask you, do you want in this city more or less Moroccans?” When the attendees ‘less, less’ chanted, Wilders said: “Then we will go about that.”
According TO Wilders with both statements a section of the population insulted, and driven to hatred and discrimination. The big difference with his previous statements and statements by other politicians such as Labour-ers S, Samsom, and Oudkerk, is the context in which the impugned statements are made or, according to the ORDER, the lack thereof.
Because Wilders after his rulings in the Hague café, although said that he of course is referring to harassing Moroccans, but that was afterwards and that differentiation was a week previously on the market, not at all done according to the ORDER. This is for a criminal limit is exceeded. According TO Wilders all the Moroccan Dutchmen on one comb shaved.
Context
Lawyer Geert-Jan Knoops will need to do all to the judges to convince that his client Wilders his controversial statements in a certain context. Also, Wilders stressed last week in an open letter that he is not all Moroccans referred to.
“Millions of Dutch people want less Moroccans. Not because they hate all Moroccans or all Moroccans out of the country want to, but because they are the trouble and terror of so many Moroccans are fed up,” said Wilders. If he is not allowed to say as a politician, the country was a dictatorship, the PVV-leader.
The court must, during the twelve-day-long process, spread over three weeks, to a judgment. Wilders can, in theory, a jail sentence, but it is more likely that he, if convicted, a fine or community service.
test trial
But the verdict of the Hague judges, the case-Wilders transcend. Because the process is also about the question of how far politicians can go on with their statements and if they are further than ‘ordinary’ citizens. Also the officers of justice, there is no secret that they expect that the judgment in the case of Wilders more clarity here about will.
In that sense, the criminal case against Wilders is a test trial. It should be, the lines indicate in which politicians can operate. Exceeding limits politicians that they are for the right can be sued. And that is where Wilders, but also others, objected to: the criminal law as a means to politicians like Wilders to be cancelled.
Arguments
Wilders has the support of the Leiden jurist and philosopher Paul Cliteur and Tom Zwart, professor of human rights at Utrecht.
According to Black, certainly not a fan of Wilders, the PVV-politician not to be persecuted for his opinions. The debate belongs, according to him, is not at home in the courtroom. That debate should you run it with arguments and words and not with subpoenas and written pleading', says Black. Cliteur and Black come this week at the request of Wilders in court to testify.
What judgment the court also shall pass, it will never be to everyone’s satisfaction. An appeal seems thus already in advance.
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