No Herman Brusselmans in the court on Tuesday, “We believe that in these identical cases there are no additional facts to discuss, everything is already said last time, so I will represent my client here,” his lawyer Mounir Souidi told the court. “You can’t be prosecuted twice for the same facts, and that’s what they are trying to do here,” he said afterwards.
The case started rolling after a column from Brusselmans in the weekly magazine There. In it he wrote: “I am so furious that I want to ram a pointed knife through the throat.” He added: “Of course you always have to think about it: not every Jew is a murderous bastard.” Since then, one procedure for anti -Semitism and negationism has followed the other.
So far with little success. At a first direct summons by the vzw Jewish Information and Documentation Center (JID) and a man from the Orthodox Community in Antwerp before the same court, Brusselmans was already acquitted in March. According to the judge, the column was an expression of freedom of expression and his work does not show that Brusselmans “had the will to encourage others to hatred and violence.” At first glance, the case of these three new civil parties does not really differ from that first direct summons. For that reason, lawyers Walter van Steenbrugge and Quinten De Keersmaecker want the judge to be replaced by one of her colleagues.
Lawyers Walter van Steenbrugge and Quinten De Keersmaecker at the start of the third procedure against Herman Brusselmans. © Christophe De Muynck
Request
“I come to a court who has already pronounced in this case. We cannot argue here for an unbiased court, because we have already seen how you approached that case then,” Van Steenbrugge argued. According to him, both things are very similar, only in this case people want to dive even deeper into the past and old writings of Herman Brusselmans. The three civil parties that had brought the case against the writer were not present on Tuesday. If the court did not withdraw, the lawyers were ready to start a challenge procedure. After a brief deliberation, the president of the court decided not to go into their request: “You can submit your request for wreckage to the registry,” she decided before suspending it.
Herman Brusselmans was not present in the court of Ghent. © Christophe De Muynck
Whether a new judge will make a substantial difference is doubtful. The same complaint was already rejected by the council chamber. Another complaint from the European Jewish Association (EJA) against Herman Brusselmans has since been rejected by the council chamber and also on appeal by the Chamber of Invigible. Another complaint with civil party feature of the coordination committee of Jewish organizations in Belgium (CCOJB), the Forum of Jewish organizations (FJO) and the Center Community Laïc Juif (CCLJ) has been postponed for the council chamber because additional research must first be done. There is no new date yet scheduled.