The Netherlands: The Geert Wilders Show Trial Continues
by Soeren Kern • February 8, 2020 at 5:00 am
The emails indicate that Prime Minister Mark Rutte himself was involved in the decision to prosecute Wilders.
"Minister Van der Steur has deliberately withheld those documents, as is apparent from these documents. Moreover, it appears that another Justice Minister, Minister Opstelten, lied..." — Geert Wilders, February 5, 2020
"Mr. Presiding Judge, the Minister of Justice interfered in detail with my conviction. The documents even state that the Ministry of Justice instructed the public prosecutor — you will find the word 'instruct' in the documents...." -- Geert Wilders, February 5, 2020
"And every day that this trial continues and you do not punish the conspiring prosecution, and the Ministry of Justice for their lies and haggling with the principles of an independent, fair and balanced trial, by declaring them inadmissible, every day this trial continues is a black day in the history of Dutch justice." — Geert Wilders, February 5, 2020
"In the Wilders case, we certainly do not have to rely on the judge to agree with Wilders and to reach the conclusion that there has been a political trial, which is therefore not legally valid.... Wilders case appears to have been pre-cooked in the cabinet itself.... [Prime Minister] Rutte himself was involved.... The lying and spinning must stop somewhere.... This rule of law, in which judges and prosecutors receive instructions by the politicians on how to act, is rotten from within." – Joost Niemöller, Dutch Journalist, Ongehoordnederland.nl, February 5, 2020
Newly released documents show that senior members of the Dutch government — including the prime minister and two former justice ministers — applied political pressure on public prosecutors to indict Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid, PVV), for hate speech for comments he made about Islam and Moroccan immigrants.
The documents, which the government turned over to the Amsterdam-based newspaper De Volkskrant in compliance with a Freedom of Information request, appear to confirm long-standing allegations by Wilders that the government's decade-long legal war against him is far from a principled pursuit of justice, and instead politically motivated, aimed at silencing his criticism of multiculturalism and mass migration from the Muslim world.
