NRC HANDELSBLAD: Populist politician Geert Wilders is taking his case to the high court, asking the country's highest judicial body to quash the order to prosecute him "in the interest of the law".
The member of parliament has enlisted one of the Netherlands' best known lawyers, Bram Moszkowicz, to fight his prosecution over inciting hatred and discrimination. The lawyer has confirmed he is taking the case to the country's high court, requesting an immediate end to the proceedings.
The Amsterdam appeals court in January ordered that Wilders must be prosecuted for insulting Muslims and describing the Koran as "the Islamic Mein Kampf". Wilders, leader of the opposition Party for Freedom (PVV), claims he is doing nothing other than exercising his right to free speech, both inside and outside parliament. Following formal objections by individual citizens and interest groups, the Amsterdam court order reversed a decision by the public prosecutor's office to refrain from opening a case against Wilders.
Wilders on his website says: "I've hired the best lawyer of the Netherlands for a ruthless fight against the charges that I'm facing." In an earlier case Moszkowicz profited from a state’s request to quash a case in the interest of the law, achieving almost by accident his desired result of halting the prosecution in the Netherlands of Surinam's former strongman Desi Bouterse for his involvement in a series of political murders in 1982. The court declared in 2001 that the Netherlands had no jurisdiction in that case.
Dozens of citizens, companies and authorities plead for the cassation of irrevocable verdicts against them every year in the Netherlands, mostly to no avail. The independent representative of the prosecution at the high court almost never accepts such requests. The procedure is mainly used to correct obvious mistakes, clarify jurisprudence, affirm or rephrase the court's position. The criteria for quashing a verdict "in the interest of the law" is that a greater public interest is at stake.
According to Ybo Buruma, professor of criminal law at the Radboud University, Wilders's request to have his case put before the high court has a minimal chance of success. Buruma thinks that public relations are more involved here than the law. Yet he understands why Moszkowicz is exploring this avenue, given the practical consequences of the verdict in the Bouterse case. >>> By Folkert Jensma | Tuesday, February 3, 2009
This article was translated and edited in partnership with RNW.
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