From Bloomberg
The Amsterdam district court rejected a request by Freedom Party Leader Geert Wilders, who is on trial for inciting hatred and insulting Muslims, to replace the judges hearing his case because they may be prejudiced.
“There are no weighty indications that the judges have given the impression of being prejudiced,” Judge Frans Bauduin, who was brought in to rule on the impartiality question, said at the court today. The trial, which was halted yesterday, will continue with the current judges tomorrow at 9 a.m. local time.
Presiding Judge Jan Moors yesterday, on the first day of the trial, told Wilders the court “reads newspapers and watches television” and that Wilders has been blamed by others for being “good in taking a stand and then avoiding a discussion.” By choosing not to testify “it seems you’re doing that today as well.”
Wilders, who has agreed to support the country’s new minority government, challenged the impartiality of the three- judge panel because of what Moors said, claiming “a fair trial isn’t possible anymore.”
“The words used by the presiding judge in that last sentence were chosen unfortunately,” Bauduin said. “They’ve given the requestor a wrong impression.”
Wilders, 47, is being prosecuted after complaints following a 2007 Dutch newspaper editorial he wrote that called the Koran “fascist” and compared it to Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf. A year later, he released the movie “Fitna,” in which he calls on Muslims to rip out “hate-preaching” verses from the book.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jurjen van de Pol in Amsterdam at jv*******@bl*******.net.
No surprise here, the Judges all ready have their orders from the back room power brokers and will rule accordingly.
Have you ever known a really bad tempered person who tended to blow up at the least provocation, and how you start becoming very tense and careful around that person? We call that state of heightened carefulness, “walking on egg shells”. Have you ever noticed that people like that invariably blame their victims for “making them mad” The correct responses to such people used to be to either leave them alone, or blow up back at them and tell them to smarten up, never to simply to give in to their bullying like a trembling little mouse. The Muslims are trying to establish that it is OK to make people walk on egg-shells, that it’s a legitimate action to bully people into compliance and turn them into mice. Is that OK with everybody? No problems with that? If so, then I guess we are well and truly screwed. Squeeeeeak!!!
They are going to give him a quick fair trial and then hang him, all this obvious disregard for the law and the facts is going to do is make a maryter our of Wilders.
This is the Dutch version of the Dreyfus case and will stain the Dutch for years to come.