Free speech scores a win in the Netherlands, maybe…

Finally, a Western government doesn’t bow before Islam!

Wilders off the hook

Published on : 15 October 2010 - 8:05pm

The Geert Wilders trial is as good as over. The public prosecutor has called for the populist politician to be acquitted of all charges against him. The trial will continue, but everything is now an anti-climax.

During two days of intricately constructed arguments, the prosecutors told the court they found no evidence that Geert Wilders had broken the law.

Acquittal
"We request acquittal on fact 2...we request acquittal on fact 3." Statement after statement, and charge after charge, prosecutors Birgit van Roessel and Paul Velleman, who took turns reading the arguments, said Wilders had not broken the law.

 

Dutch prosecutors move to drop charges against Geert Wilders for criticizing Islam

Earlier, in Headlines, I wrote that he’d been acquitted on all counts, but that’s not quite true. Presumably all charges will now be dismissed — Radio Netherlands says the case is as good as over — but it’s not the prosecutors who have been Wilders’s chief tormentors in all this. It’s the courts, who actually forced them to press charges against him for “sowing hatred” early last year. So in theory, they could refuse the prosecutors’ motion and demand that the case proceed. Which, of course, will only succeed in making him even more popular in the Netherlands by turning him into a free-speech martyr.

The ostensible charges here are group defamation and inciting hatred, but really it’s just a blasphemy trial by the back door. And that’s why prosecutors want him released. If denouncing a religion is a hate crime against its adherents, then not only is blasphemy back in full force but you’re way, way down the slippery slope of placing certain subjects beyond criticism.