A 41-year-old man was injured in a dispute between two extended families of Turkish origin from the northern district on Saturday evening. According to current information, he had been lured to the sports field in Oerel under a pretext. Several members of the other family had expected him there. The background could have been a family dispute that had already taken place in Bremervörde earlier this month. At the sports field, an attack took place, in the course of which the 41-year-old was injured on the head and by a stabbing in the leg. The man was able to escape in his car. He had to be treated in a hospital. In the course of the incident, the victim’s family rallied about 40 people, some of them from the wider community.The Bremervörde police then showed a strong presence with support forces at trouble spots in the north circle. A mediator was also deployed between the two families. The police have provisionally arrested two men. In the meantime, the situation has calmed down again.

https://fredalanmedforth.blogspot.com/2020/02/oerel-messerstecherei-unter-turkischen.html

In the time between the 05th of February 2020 and the 07th of February 2020 at 10:20 am the local church in Seega (photo above) was attacked by so far unknown perpetrators. On the spot, the police noticed that a window pane was smashed or broken by means of a pole, whereby the perpetrators left the pole in the church nave. Whether something was stolen by the perpetrators or whether there was only damage to property is currently the subject of further investigations.Witnesses of the crime are requested to report to the responsible police inspection.

https://fredalanmedforth.blogspot.com/2020/02/seega-kirche-vandalisiert.html

Yesterday, Saturday, between 2.15 p.m. and about 3 p.m., a bodily injury was committed in the tram line S51 from Pforzheim to Karlsruhe or in Durlach station against a 37 year old man suffering from a mental disability. The man was in the company of his 58-year-old mother when, for reasons as yet unknown, an argument broke out with a group of two young men. In the course of this dispute, the 37-year-old was punched in the face. This incident took place in the front area of the tram. The mother fled with her son and got off at Durlach station. Here they escaped into an underpass. They were chased by the perpetrators, the 37-year-old son was kicked in the face by one of the men, and probably hit in the face several times by the other man. When the mother called for help, other passers-by joined them, which could prevent the aggressors from further attacks. The son suffered facial swelling from the blows and kicking. The perpetrators were two men, about 20 years old, 180 cm tall, slim, one of them was wearing a white T-shirt. The men could have been of Turkish origin because of the language they spoke. The perpetrators were accompanied by two women, also about 20 years old, who, however, did not actively involve themselves in the incident. The police are asking witnesses, especially those who came to the aid of the perpetrators, to contact the Karlsruhe-Durlach police station by calling 0721/49070.

https://fredalanmedforth.blogspot.com/2020/02/karlsruhe-vermutlich-turken-schlagen.html

German FDP politician Thomas Kemmerich resigned shortly after his election on February 5 as Thuringian state prime minister, because he was unable to withstand the pressure for just one day – a pressure which many AfD members have been exposed to for years.

The AfD in Thuringia on Wednesday kept their most important election promise to end the red-red-green coalition in the state and made it clear to Bodo Ramelow what he was finished. But Berlin has shattered the illusion that the Union and the FDP would prevent it from happening.

Kemmerich initially accepted his election as prime minister, therefore consciously accepting the AfD’s votes. He had clearly wanted to win the election and the AfD made sure of it.

“The goal of replacing red-red-green and the chance for a conservative-liberal, social government in Thuringia, which is supported by the AfD, CDU and FDP in parliament, was worth it. We agreed on this within the group,” explained Björn Höcke, AfD speaker of the parliamentary group of the AfD in Thuringia.

“Instead of accepting a flawless election result, Chancellor Merkel from South Africa, seconded by the usual suspects of the established establishment, called for the correction of the election. The federal leaders of the CDU and FDP subsequently put tremendous pressure on the representatives of their Thuringian state associations. Thomas Kemmerich’s family apparently also received death threats from violent supporters of the elected red-red-green state government. Even Kemmerich’s children needed police protection,” Höcke said in a statement.

“In this way, a constitutional body, the newly elected Prime Minister of the Free State of Thuringia, was forced to resign. Not only is this unworthy of a democracy, but we are also convinced that it is an offense under Section 106 of the Criminal Code.”

It has thus effectively been dictated from Berlin that a new edition of the red-red-green coalition should be tolerated and kept in office until further notice. “We therefore assume that Bodo Ramelow will be re-elected in the coming weeks, at least with the approval of the FDP and CDU, and that the red, red and green will be relaunched,” according to Höcke.

Not only the parties on the left, but also the CDU/CSU and the FDP – a new “Socialist Party Collective” – ​​followed these anti-democratic and absurd demands from Berlin.

“For the most part, democracy is merely a facade. The voters are not shaping power relations for the time being. At most, you decide how much influence the opposition has. Similar to the feudal state, in the vast majority of cases a few top officials of the old parties decide who should govern who, how and with whom in the federal, state and local governments.”

But despite this repression and control from Berlin, there are civic majorities which the AfD was able to demonstrate so impressively.

Höcke said the number of those who see through the propaganda of the political and media complex is growing slowly and steadily and soon it will no longer withstand the slightest contact with reality.

“The breach of the constitutional principle of freedom of the political mandate, which is a cornerstone of parliamentary democracy, has never been so obvious,” noted German philosopher Martin Renner. “It is unique in the history of German constitutional culture when the Federal Chancellor stands up and announces that a regular election to represent the sovereign is ‘unforgivable’ and must therefore be reversed immediately.”

Renner, a member of the Bundestag of the AfD, was one of the 16 founders of the party in Oberursel at the beginning of 2013.

On top of that, Angela Merkel said so very explicitly as head of government – not as a private individual – at an official press conference during a state visit abroad, Renner pointed out.

The statements of the Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder and that of the unemployed and jobless CDU general secretary Paul Ziemiak leave no doubt: From now on, all opponents of Merkel and the left are “Nazis” and “extremists”.

This essentially means that a quarter of all voters in Thuringia are no longer considered to be part of the democratic system. Participation in democracy is no longer desirable for the voters of the “Alternative for Germany”, whatever the motives for their decision to vote, and is no longer taken into account.

The de facto exclusion of an ever increasing range of voters and the deprivation of their votes and their democratic participation rights are becoming more and more evident, Renner said.

“We are approaching a political duopoly. On the one hand, the ‘left-red-green-yellow-black irrationality of the socialists and Marxists’ and on the other hand, the ‘right-blue rationality of those who feel liberal, bourgeois thinkers and conservative actors’.”

Renner added: “One side is currently trying to enforce its agenda against the other side with discrimination, defamation, taboo, violence and the use of its overwhelming media dominance. An agenda that is anti-national, anti-identitarian, anti-Christian, pro-Islamic, EU-centralized and global socialist.”

The CDU/CSU and FDP parties had promised to end Thuringia’s left-wing government, but the deputies elected with these promises are now to be forced openly to re-elect the prime minister of their political enemies, since Merkel has demanded the re-election of Ramelow.

freewestmedia.com/2020/02/09/merkel-suspends-german-parliamentary-democracy-from-pretoria/

France had just come out of the fifth anniversary of the massacre at its satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo than it was plunged into a similar case. On January 18, Mila O., a 16-year-old French girl, made insulting comments about Islam during an Instagram livestream.

“During her livestream, a Muslim boy asked her out in the comments, but she turned him down because she is gay. He responded by accusing her of racism and calling her a ‘dirty lesbian’. In an angry follow-up video, streamed immediately after she was insulted, Mila responded by saying that she ‘hates religion'”.

Mila continued, saying among other things:

“Are you familiar with freedom of expression? I didn’t hesitate to say what I thought. I hate religion. The Koran is a religion of hatred; there is only hatred in it. That’s what I think. I say what I think… Islam is sh*t… I’m not a racist at all. One cannot simply be racist against a religion… I say what I want, I say what I think. Your religion is sh*t. I’d stick a finger up your god’s a**h*le…”

What she said might be considered a bit raw, but does she have the right to say it? After all, Jews are called the descendants of pigs and apes without the speech police having a stroke.

Following her statements, Mila was targeted on social networks, where the videowas widely shared; she received numerous death threats, and her name, address and the name of her school were made public. Mila was forced to leave school for her own safety.

Now under police protection, Mila is in such danger that no French school can, for the time being, accommodate her. “I can’t set foot in my high school anymore and I can’t even change schools because the whole of France is out to get me”, she said. For not having understood what is clear to everyone — that Islam is a “religion of peace” — she is threatened with death, rape and having her throat cut.

“Are we in France or Pakistan?“, asked French intellectual Jacques Julliard. Welcome to the France of 2020, where magazines run headlines such as: “Mila, 16 years old, threatened with death for criticizing Islam”. Islamism is becoming pervasive among French Muslims. Since France has not fought it, its hold over France can only increase.

“Let’s get to the point: the progressive intelligentsia wants to believe in multicultural living together, even when reality denies it and reveals a society where diversity is translated into social and identity fragmentation”, wrote the Canadian philosopher, Mathieu Bock-Côté. When multiculturalism turns into threats to free speech, multiculturalists dangerously take the side of the Islamists. The case of Mila represents all the cracks in the disintegration of French society. According to the French journalist, Dominique Nora:

“A few weeks after the commemoration of the massacre at Charlie [Hebdo], the ‘Mila affair’ shows the disturbing asymmetry that reigns in France regarding freedom of expression, or more precisely, blasphemy.”

Mila’s story could have ended with the death threats — as the death threats against Salman Rushdie could have ended 31 years ago — if all the state authorities had immediately rushed to support Mila, and if the France as a society had condemned with one voice the barbaric aggression against the schoolgirl. The opposite happened. Avoiding “stigmatization by Muslims” has become the official excuse used by the politicians to justify abandoning the victims of violent Islamist threats, such as Mila.

Not one, but two investigations were opened, one for the death threats received by Mila and the other against Mila for “provoking religious hatred” (later dismissed). The controversy redoubled when the general delegate of the French Council for Muslim Worship, Abdallah Zekri, said that the girl had “looked for” trouble: “She must bear the consequences of what she said. Who sows the wind reaps the whirlwind”. Islamists are daily testing the resilience of our democratic societies.

Mila’s controversy took on a new dimension when Minister of Justice Nicole Belloubet, after having first condemned the death threats received by Mila, declared: “Insulting religion is obviously an attack on freedom of conscience; it is serious.” Unfortunately for Belloubet but fortunately for France, that is not (yet) a crime. Belloubet later admitted her “mistake“. Nonetheless, the damage was immense. Ségolène Royal, a former minister and presidential candidate, piled on, saying that Mila had lacked “respect“.

“No, you’re not Mila; you, Mrs. Ségolène Royal, have no courage”, tweeted the philosopher Raphaël Enthoven in response. Martine Aubry, the socialist mayor of Lille, asked Mila to “exercise restraint and avoid this kind of talk, even if the threats are unacceptable”. France is rapidly going from laïcité (secularism) to lâcheté (cowardice); from freedom of expression to unconditional surrender. France keeps trying to procrastinate while Islamism thrives on the elites’ rapidly abandoning their Judeo-Christian values.

There were even those, such as the historian of religion, Oden Vallet, claiming that Mila is “responsible” for future terror attacks.

A former cartoonist at Charlie Hebdo, Delfeil de Ton, after the 2015 massacre of his colleagues, shamefully accused Charlie Hebdo‘s late editor Stéphane Charbonnier of “dragging” the staff into the slaughter by satirizing Mohammed.

Mila’s case resembles that of a French philosopher, Robert Redeker, who in 2006 published an opinion extremely critical of Islam in Le Figaro. Following this, Redeker, who was a teacher in a public high school in Toulouse, began receiving death threats by phone, email and through Al Hesbah, a password-protected forum with ties to Al Qaeda. “I can’t work, I can’t come and go and am obliged to hide”, Redeker said from an undisclosed location. “So in some way, the Islamists have succeeded in punishing me on the territory of the republic as if I were guilty of a crime of opinion”. That was the “fatwa in the country of Voltaire“.

Fifteen years later, Mila’s case shows how greatly the Islamists have indeed succeeded.

There are a few brave writers who have defended Mila. In an article for the Journal du Dimanche, the former Charlie Hebdo lawyer Richard Malka wroteabout “Mila’s case or the triumph of fear.”

“There is no reaction from ministers and major feminists or LGBT associations, artists and ‘progressives’. Turn your head, whistle, look at your shoes before choosing fashionable indignations that you will embrace with all the more ardor as long as they don’t expose you to any risk”.

Malka also wrote that “no human rights organizations has protested or expressed solidarity with the girl whose life has suddenly been plunged into hiding”. Feminist organizations, so quick to denounce “toxic masculinity” and “patriarchal structures of domination”, were also silent.

Today there are many countries where people are killed because they dare to criticize Islam. In the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, a country that punishes blasphemy with death, judges sentenced to death but later absolved Asia Bibi for that “crime”. Today, in France, the country of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which always sanctified freedom of expression and the right to criticize religion and ideologies, some within the justice system — in the name of a misguided, militant anti-racism — are quietly and de facto reintroducing the crime of blasphemy. “The Mila Affair: Are we pretending to create a crime of blasphemy in French law?” asked an appeal published by Le Figaro.

Today, in France, using freedom of expression to criticize Islam is clearly an extremely dangerous act, even if you, like Mila, are a child. Those who disassociate themselves from Mila wear masks of submission.

Franz-Olivier Giesbert, an influential commentator and former editor of Le Figaro, accused Justice Minister Belloubet of appeasing Islamists, and compared her actions to those of the Vichy regime that collaborated with Hitler. “Is France still France?”, Giesbert asked in an editorial for the news magazine Le Point.

“Some days you wonder. In Islamic republics such as Pakistan or Iran [Belloubet’s comments] would be normal. But they are not normal in France, the country of the Enlightenment where there is a right to blasphemy”.

If you count all the French journalists, cartoonists and writers currently under police protection for criticizing Islam, then, yes, France is turning into the new Pakistan. Éric Zemmour, the author of Le Suicide Français, is followed by two police guards wherever he goes; Charlie Hebdo‘s director, “Riss”, and the remaining cartoonists live under police protection as does Philippe Val, the former director of Charlie Hebdo, who decided to publish the Mohammed cartoons in 2006. The journalist Zineb Rhazaoui is surrounded by six policemen. Already in 2002, two noted authors were forced to stand trial in France for their ideas on Islam, Oriana Fallaci and Michel Houellebecq.

Five major French intellectuals — Elisabeth Badinter, Elisabeth de Fontenay, Marcel Gauchet, Jacques Julliard and Jean-Pierre Le Goff — published a pro-Mila appeal in L’Express, calling out “the cowardice of justice and politics now obsessed with the acrobatics on the subjects of freedom of expression when it comes to Islam. We will pay dearly for this cowardice”.

After the massacre at Charlie Hebdo, Pope Francis said, “Curse my mother, expect a punch”, and blamed the cartoonists for their own murder. Islamists are winning the ideological battle and we are behaving like cowards. Will 16-year-old Mila have to be murdered to unify people enough so that the cowards can say “Je suis Mila” for 24 hours?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15526/france-blasphemy-censorship

Anyone who tries to coach basketball at a place called Malcolm X. Shabazz High School in the city that produced Mayor Cory Booker deserves combat pay.

Via Fox News:

Four members of the team from Malcolm X. Shabazz High School in Newark allegedly assaulted the victim after they exited a bus upon returning from a basketball game in Livingston Tuesday night, as WABC reported.

The victim was their own coach.

“Malcolm X. Shabazz” apparently refers to Malcolm Little, aka El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, aka Malcolm X. He became famous by stoking violent race hatred and for a moral creed that he summed up with the words “by any means necessary.” With amoral sociopaths presented to them as role models, it is hardly surprising that the students would behave like savages.

moonbattery.com/coaching-basketball-at-malcolm-x-shabazz-high-school/

German Jews and NGOs have come out swinging against an allegedly anti-Israel German Green Party MP who is on the advisory board of the pro-BDS German-Palestinian Society and sympathizes with Iran’s regime.The organization Munich Citizens against Antisemitism told The Jerusalem Post last week that the Green Party MP Omid Nouripour, “Of course, should resign.”

According to the human rights group, the German-Palestinian Society (GPS) and the role of Nouripour means “they support BDS [Boycott,Divestment, Sanctions] smear campaigns against Israel and this is nothing more than left-wing antisemitism and this means a boycott of Israeli business, science, and art.”The group said, “Who propagates not buying goods from Israel behaves no differently than the National Socialists at the time.”  They also said, “Do not buy from Jews!”“BDS has nothing to do with democracy, freedom of expression or dialogue,” said the Munich-based organization.The distinguished German-Jewish attorney Nathan Gelbart, who has won legal cases against antisemites, told the Post that “Anyone who knows Nouripour will immediately recognize his wrong appointment in the horror cabinet of the advisory board of the DPG. The question is whether and when he recognizes it. BDS stands for hatred of Jews and democratic values.”Dr. Elio Adler, the chairman of the German-Jewish NGO Values Initiative, told the Post that the German Bundestag classified BDS as antisemitic in 2019. “Too blatant is the antisemitism contained in the BDS campaign,” said Adler, asking why members of the Bundestag are on the advisory board of a BDS entity.

Margaret Traub, the chairwoman of the Jewish community in Bonn, told the Post that NGOs like the German-Palestinian Society are a “shame for Germany. The virus of antisemitism unfortunately never disappears but mutates. Anti-Zionism is the new socially acceptable variant of antisemitism.”Lala Süsskind, the former chairwoman of Berlin’s Jewish community and currently the head of the Jewish Education Institute for Democracy and against Antisemitism, told the Post that “I want to know where my enemies are sitting and expressing themselves unbalanced. The German-Palestinian Society and its allies must stay under our constant observation! And we have to act together and step up against their arguments. “Dr. Elvira Grözinger, the deputy director of the German branch of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, told the Post that in connection with Nouripour’s leaning toward Iran’s radical clerical regime shows that “this society (DPG) is influenced by Iran, which clearly shows its direction as opposed to the Jewish state.”She added that “It is a scandal that German MPs, despite the German federal pledge to Israel’s security and history, are targeting the Jewish state, pursue its annihilation and promote its boycotts. Antisemites of this kind must not have a place in a democratic parliament.”Another German-Palestinian Society advisory board member is Christine Buchholz, a Left Party Bundestag deputy, who has defended Hezbollah – Iran’s chief terrorist proxy in the Middle East – and Hamas terrorism against Israel as a justified form of “resistance.”Nouripour, who co-drafted a pro-BDS initiative in the Bundestag in 2013 to sanction Jewish products from the West Bank, declined to answer numerous Post media queries.Friederike Bieber, a spokeswoman for the Green Party, told the Post that its media query was forwarded to the Green Party faction in the Bundestag. The Green Party faction, including its leaders Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock, has been plagued by allegations that it is contributing to rising antisemitism in Germany.Last year, the Bild paper in Germany said Green Party member Claudia Roth made “antisemitism socially respectable” by enthusiastically meeting with the head of Iran’s quasi-Parliament Ali Larijani.Larijani has denied the Holocaust in Germany and supports the destruction of the Jewish state. The German-Palestinian Society told the Post it will “ignore” Post press queries. The GPS member Peter Himstedt said that the Post’s coverage of the Middle East and Germany is “demotivating.”The Post’s exposure last week of the MPs on the advisory board of the GPS has led one MP, the Free Democratic Party politician Olaf in der Beek , to announce that he will resign from the pro-Palestinian group if it does not reject the BDS campaign.The GPS joined the international BDS campaign in 2015 and has refused to drop its support for the BDS campaign against the Jewish state.

https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Antisemitism/German-Jews-urge-Green-Party-MP-to-resign-from-antisemitic-BDS-group-616957

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.

On February 3, De Volkskrant reported that the government documents — numbering nearly 500 pages — show that as early as 2008, then-Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin was “intensively involved” in the decision to prosecute Wilders.

According to De Volkskrant, the Public Prosecution Service (Openbaar Ministerie, OM) found nothing illegal about Wilders statements, but Hirsch Ballin pressed the OM on three separate occasions to change its assessment.

In June 2008, the OM dismissed more than 40 criminal complaints against Wilders on the grounds that his statements were made “in the context of political debate” and therefore “not of a punishable nature.”

In January 2009, the Amsterdam Appeals Court, the second-highest legal authority in the Netherlands, overturned the OM’s decision and ruled that Wilders could be tried for inciting hatred. Wilders said that it was a “black day for myself and for freedom of speech.”

The first trial against Wilders began on October 4, 2010. He was accused of insulting religious and ethnic groups and inciting hatred and discrimination for describing Islam as fascist and comparing the Koran to Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf. Wilders argued that his statements were directed at Islam as an ideology and not at individual Muslim believers.

The trial collapsed on October 22, 2010, after it emerged that Tom Schalken, one of the judges in the case, had tried to sway a potential witness.

The retrial began on February 6, 2011 with three new judges. Wilders said that his trial was about preserving freedom of expression in the West.

On June 23, 2011, Wilders was acquitted of all charges. Judge Marcel van Oosten ruled that the statements by Wilders, while “gross and denigrating,” did not meet the standard of hate speech and as such were “acceptable within the context of public debate.”

Despite the acquittal, the government’s harassment of Wilders continued. Internal government emails recently published by RTL Nieuws show that Hirsch Ballin’s successor, Justice Minister Ivo Opstelten, repeatedly pressured the OM to bring a new case against Wilders. Opstelten, his aides and the prosecutor repeatedly consulted with each other before the decision to prosecute Wilders a second time was made in the fall of 2014. The OM has always denied that it was subject to outside political interference; the emails show that the OM denials were untruthful. An email sent by the lead prosecutor, Wouter Bos, on October 8, 2014, warned: “This must not leak!”

Other government emails show that the decision to bring a new case against Wilders was discussed as early as March 2014 in the Council of Ministers, the executive council of Dutch government, formed by all the ministers, including the prime minister. The emails indicate that Prime Minister Mark Rutte himself was involved in the decision to prosecute Wilders.

On March 18, 2016, Wilders went on trial again for allegedly inciting hatred against Moroccan immigrants. Prosecutors said that in March 2014, Wilders, while campaigning in The Hague, asked a crowd of supporters if they wanted more or fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands. The crowd said fewer. Wilders responded: “We’ll take care of that.”

Prosecution spokeswoman Ilse de Heer said that Wilders “targeted a specific race, which is considered a crime.” Wilders countered that his comments referred to Moroccan criminals, not to Moroccans in general, and that, in any event, Moroccans are not a race.

On December 9, 2016, Wilders was found guilty of inciting discrimination. The court, however, imposed no form of punishment; it said that the verdict was sufficient penalty. The Public Prosecutor demanded a fine of €5,000 ($5,500). Both Wilders and the Prosecutor appealed.

Since then, Wilders has been entangled in a protracted legal process that shows no signs of ending anytime soon. In an appeal hearing on February 5, 2020, Wilders voiced his anger over the political nature of the case against him:

“Presiding Judge, members of the court: The shamelessness of the Public Prosecution Office knows no boundaries. In a report we received yesterday and heard about today, they claim — one-and-a-half days after they received the documents from the Ministry of Justice — that nothing is wrong, that nothing has been found that indicates political influence.

“Rarely have I seen attorney generals who are so damaging to the rule of law, who don’t care about a fair trial. They are blinded by their hatred for me and the PPV. These kinds of people, like those two attorney generals, ensure that the trust of ordinary people, the common man and woman in the Netherlands, in the public prosecutor and the judiciary has fallen to a low point.

“The Public Prosecutor says that there is nothing wrong. Shame on you, attorney generals. What we all know now is enough to immediately end this political process, this charade….

“We already knew, Mr. Presiding Judge and members of the court, that officials from the Ministry of Justice, under the responsibility of former Justice Minister Ivo Opstelten, had adjusted press releases from the public prosecutor. That it was Minister Opstelten himself who wanted two press releases. That his officials had made a legal analysis of this case. And shared this with the public prosecutor.

“We already knew that they had helped the public prosecutor refute the defenses of the defense. That, for example, the phrase, ‘we will arrange that’ was brought to the attention of the public prosecutor by the Ministry of Justice. That they wanted to see the requisites in advance to provide comments.

“And now there are 475 pieces again. And indeed, we have not been able to read all of them, I mean, we could hardly read any of the pieces. But if I only look at what the media writes about it, such as Volkskrant or RTL journalist Pieter Klein, then only more shocking things have come to the surface.

“It even appears now that it [the case] has been discussed in the Council of Ministers, Mr. Presiding Judge. In the Council of Ministers. How much more political does it get?

“The documents show that a senior official of the Ministry of General Affairs of Prime Minister Rutte informed a senior official of Ministry of Justice of Minister Opstelten that the Prime Minister expects the Minister of Justice to be able to say something meaningful during the Council of Ministers of March 21, 2014 about whether the prosecution of Wilders is promising.

“How promising it is! Promising: according to the dictionary, I looked it up, that also means likely, successful. It has a positive connotation. The Council of Ministers, Mr. Presiding Judge. This concerns an opposition leader in the House of Representatives. That is shameful, but that is, unfortunately, not unique, because we also know from the documents that we received yesterday that it was — in relation to the Wilders 1 trial, but I still want to have mentioned it, to indicate what they are capable of — that it was then Justice Minister Hirsch Ballin who requested legal advice three times because he did not like the earlier advice that it was impossible to prosecute Wilders. He repeated his requests for advice until he received the advice he wanted.

“Back to this trial. Apart from the fact that it was discussed in the Council of Ministers — words cannot express, it does not become much more political and corrupt — former [Justice] Minister Van der Steur, the documents show, deliberately and personally stopped the publication, on the basis of the Dutch Freedom of Information Act (WOB), of an official message about my persecution. Minister Van der Steur stopped that.

“According to the documents, the decision on the WOB request was delayed until after the decision of the Court of First Instance. Until after my conviction. Imagine that. Mafia practices. Pure political influence of the worst kind. A minister who deliberately withholds relevant and possibly exculpatory documents until after the conviction. Words really cannot express…

“If we had received those documents earlier and also all the other documents requested on that basis, and now also obtained with the permission of your court, then perhaps it might not have come to a conviction at all…then the court might not have decided on a conviction in the first instance.

“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 when he said during his interrogation by the commissioner, that outside the Council of Ministers — you can find it literally in the reports — he never spoke about this matter with other ministers.

“The documents that we received yesterday show that he did indeed talk to other ministers about this outside the Council of Ministers, namely with Interior Minister Ronald Plasterk.

“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 — when and at what time they had to call me on October 9, 2014, to say that I was a suspect. For a phone call to me, saying that I was a suspect, the Public Prosecutor’s Office was instructed by the Ministry of Justice when and at what time and on what day that had to happen.

“My case has been dealt with in detail. And this whole trial, just like the Wilders 1 trial, is permeated with political influence. From phone calls, up to the Council of Ministers, and to ministers who withheld or delayed documents, an opposition leader from the national parliament has been prosecuted for ten years that way.

“Politics have always been involved, from civil servants to ministers and the Council of Ministers. 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.

“This trial will have to stop today. I have said it many times. To be honest, I find it incomprehensible that this has not been decided long ago by declaring the prosecution inadmissible. If in the unfortunate event, even after today, you want to continue with this trial again, then indeed, and you have just said that, Mr. Presiding Judge, we need ample time to read all those documents and possibly based on those documents, also call new witnesses, like Minister Van der Steur. Like the prime minister. Like all the people involved.

“It is clear from these documents that they are more involved than we already knew. And see the minutes, the records, of the Council of Ministers as well. It appears to have been discussed. It has been said by the General Affairs official against the Justice official: ‘[Prime Minister Mark] Rutte wants to say something about the chances of this trial, Ivo [Opstelten].’ And Ivo went to the Council of Ministers on March 21. This has always been denied. Denied during the interrogations. Now it appears to have just happened. I want to see those documents from the Council of Ministers. I want to talk to people about it. It is not just about someone who steals a roll of licorice. It is about the opposition leader in the Dutch parliament whose persecution has been influenced up to the Council of Ministers.

“I want to hear the truth. I want to hear more than the truth about the political influence in this trial so that this trial is taken off the table as quickly as possible.

Veteran Dutch journalist Joost Niemöller wrote:

“On February 3, just before another hearing in the endless criminal case against Wilders, a bulk of internal documents were dropped by Justice Minister Ferdinand Grapperhaus which relate to the official and political involvement in this trial. These documents were intended for the House of Representatives and are now public.

“If the Chamber takes its task seriously, it must investigate the political nature of this lawsuit. That is emphatically not an investigation into the trial itself — after all, we have a separation of powers here — but an investigation into the political role behind the continuation of this trial….

“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…. After the internal documents released, the issue has become even more flammable.

“The 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.

“The anger of Wilders in court was only too understandable, and all too justified. It is the anger of more and more Dutch people. Even in the mainstream media it is now recognized that this political pre-cooking goes beyond all limits.

“This is the umpteenth example in which democracy is excluded by the judiciary, because the judiciary and the OM have become an extension of politics.

“This point is increasingly emphasized by, among others, Forum for Democracy leader Thierry Baudet, whose hypocritical opponents accuse him of rejecting the rule of law.

“This rule of law, in which judges and prosecutors receive instructions by the politicians on how to act, is rotten from within.”

Wilders’ trial will continue on March 23. Four additional hearings are scheduled for April. It remains unclear when his trial will end.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15553/geert-wilders-show-trial

In the night to today’s Saturday, a security employee (46 y/o) and a person coming to his aid (43 y/o) were fatally injured in the downtown area of Cologne by a knife attack. Police provisionally arrested a man (22 y/o) from Afghanistan at the scene of the crime under strong suspicion. A homicide squad started investigations into attempted manslaughter and dangerous bodily injury during the night. According to initial findings, a dispute between the security guard and a resident occurred around 2 a.m. in the street Severinstraße at the entrance to a hotel rented by the municipality of Cologne to house refugees. In the course of the argument, the 22-year-old allegedly attacked the doorman with a knife and seriously injured him. Another resident of the hotel (43 y/o) hurried to the aid. The perpetrator also attacked him and inflicted serious injuries with the blade. Paramedics took the two seriously injured to a clinic. The doctors treating him currently describe the 43-year-old’s state of health as stable. The background to the crime is still unclear. Further information on the investigation is not expected before Monday afternoon.

https://fredalanmedforth.blogspot.com/2020/02/koln-afghane-sticht-auf-zwei-manner-ein.html