Wilders restricted to only three witnesses on the nature of Islam

(Note: see commenter who says that as a result of the Court’s refusal to let him present information vital to his defense, Wilders should refuse to defend himself, thus depriving the Court of the false appearance of fairness and legality and letting the true nature of this trial be revealed.)

Paul Belien sends this e-mail:

Short session. The court ruled that it is competent to deal with the case. It restricted the list of 18 witnesses which Wilders had asked to be heard to only three people: the Dutch Arabists Jansen and Admiraal, plus Wafa Sultan.

Are Leon de Winter and the editors of the Wall Street Journal relieved now of the anxiety that had beset them? Since the court has radically reduced the number of witnesses Wilders can call and thus radically reduced his ability to show the truth of his own statements about Islam for which he is being charged with incitement of hatred and discrimination, there is no longer any danger that the trial will be about the teachings of the religion and political ideology that Wilders is threatened with imprisonment for having criticized. It was the fear that the trial would be about the nature of Islam rather than about Wilders’s acts of incitement to discrimination against Muslims that led de Winter and the WSJ to call for the trial to be stopped.

Update (4:30 p.m): Just wondering: has any American newspaper ever denounced the hate speech laws that prevail in every country in Western Europe?

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Morgan writes from England

In my view, given the restrictions on his defence that you describe, he should refuse to participate in the trial—i.e. no defence. Just sit there and watch and listen. This will give the trial the appearance of one of Stalin’s or Hitler’s show trials.

This would, in the eyes of hundreds of millions of non-Muslim observers, reverse the trial and put the Dutch legal system itself on trial.

If they will not permit him to defend himself the (legal AND lawful) way he wants to, then he should refuse to defend himself at all. That will seriously un-nerve the Dutch state as they actually like to be thought of as the most reasonable and liberal people in the world.

But liberals conducting show trials that restrict or prohibit the defendant from defending himself? How “reasonable” and “liberal” is that?

P.S. Also, Geert Wilders’s site may be a source of information.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 03, 2010 08:39 AM | Send