This is a welcome development, and what would have been even better would be a full dismissal. Round one has gone Geert’s way due to the judge on the bench tampering with one of his witnesses. The whole trial has been one gigantic farce. KGS
Read Klein Verzet for the whole scoop.
UPDATE: Gates of Vienna: Turning the Tables
An update from VH:
Now Geert Wilders has filed a complaint against Tom Schalken, of the judiciary of the Amsterdam Court, who ordered the prosecution of Geert Wilders
AMSTERDAM — A Dutch court ordered a retrial Friday for anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders, sending the closely-watched hate speech case back to square one before a whole new panel of judges.
The far-right politician faces charges of inciting hatred against Muslims for many remarks, including some equating Islam with fascism and violence and others calling for a ban on the Quran and a tax on Muslim headscarves.
Wilders accused judges at the Amsterdam District Court of bias and called for their dismissal after they refused to recall a defense witness who wrote on a weblog that a member of an appeals panel directly involved in the case had improperly contacted him.
A hastily convened substitute panel ruled Friday that Wilders’ objections were valid, which means the trial that began in January must restart from the beginning with new judges.
Wilders welcomed the decision.
“This gives me a new chance on a new fair trial,” he said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. “I am confident that I can only be acquitted because I have broken no law but spoke the truth and nothing but the truth and exercised my freedom of speech in an important public debate about the dangerous totalitarian ideology called Islam.”
Labour: London borough becomes 'Islamic republic'
https://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/andrewgilligan/100060304/labour-london-borough-becomes-islamic-republic/
Outside the Wellington Way polling station in Tower Hamlets yesterday, as at many other polling stations in the borough, people had to run a gauntlet of Lutfur Rahman supporters to reach the ballot box. As one Bengali woman voter went past them, we heard one of the Rahman army scolding her for her “immodest dress.”
That incident is perhaps a tiny taste of the future for Britain’s poorest borough now it has elected Mr Rahman as its first executive mayor, with almost total power over its £1 billion budget. At the count last night, one very senior figure in the Tower Hamlets Labour Party said: “It really is Britain’s Islamic republic now.”
For the last eight months – without complaint or challenge from Mr Rahman – this blog and newspaper have laid out his close links with a group of powerful local businessmen and with a Muslim supremacist body, the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) – which believes, in its own words, in transforming the “very infrastructure of society, its institutions, its culture, its political order and its creed… from ignorance to Islam.” Mr Rahman has refused to deny these claims.
Outside the Wellington Way polling station in Tower Hamlets yesterday, as at many other polling stations in the borough, people had to run a gauntlet of Lutfur Rahman supporters to reach the ballot box. As one Bengali woman voter went past them, we heard one of the Rahman army scolding her for her “immodest dress.”
That incident is perhaps a tiny taste of the future for Britain’s poorest borough now it has elected Mr Rahman as its first executive mayor, with almost total power over its £1 billion budget. At the count last night, one very senior figure in the Tower Hamlets Labour Party said: “It really is Britain’s Islamic republic now.”
For the last eight months – without complaint or challenge from Mr Rahman – this blog and newspaper have laid out his close links with a group of powerful local businessmen and with a Muslim supremacist body, the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) – which believes, in its own words, in transforming the “very infrastructure of society, its institutions, its culture, its political order and its creed… from ignorance to Islam.” Mr Rahman has refused to deny these claims.
Outside the Wellington Way polling station in Tower Hamlets yesterday, as at many other polling stations in the borough, people had to run a gauntlet of Lutfur Rahman supporters to reach the ballot box. As one Bengali woman voter went past them, we heard one of the Rahman army scolding her for her “immodest dress.”
That incident is perhaps a tiny taste of the future for Britain’s poorest borough now it has elected Mr Rahman as its first executive mayor, with almost total power over its £1 billion budget. At the count last night, one very senior figure in the Tower Hamlets Labour Party said: “It really is Britain’s Islamic republic now.”
For the last eight months – without complaint or challenge from Mr Rahman – this blog and newspaper have laid out his close links with a group of powerful local businessmen and with a Muslim supremacist body, the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) – which believes, in its own words, in transforming the “very infrastructure of society, its institutions, its culture, its political order and its creed… from ignorance to Islam.” Mr Rahman has refused to deny these claims.