polder pundit

 Four days after the arrest of cartoonist ‘Gregorius Nekschot’, here is a resume of the known facts.

In 2005, Abdul-Jabbar van der Ven filed a complaint against Nekschot, because of the alleged insulting and hatred-inciting nature of Nekschot’s cartoons.

According to the Dutch DA, it took three years to discover the individual who used the nickname “Gregorius Nekschot”. They claim to have found out his real identity by tracing the person who made monthly payments for the hosting of the website http://www.gegoriusnekschot.nl (comment: how clever! And that took only three years! Karma to the Dutch police!)

Yesterday, the DA claimed  that the rather heavy measure of 30 hours of arrest was due to the fact that it wanted to broaden the scope of its investigation: instead of investigating a single cartoon, according to them they sought to ascertain that ‘Nekschot’ was “inciting hatred on a long-term basis and making a profession of insulting”, hence the fact that “the accused was held longer than would normally have been the case”.

Today there is no mention of this anymore in the press releases of the Dutch DA. The latest official version is that “Nekschot is suspected to have expressed himself in such an insulting way regarding a group of people because of their race or religion that it can be considered as discrimination. In the cartoons under investigation he attributes negative characteristics to groups of people because of their race or religion.  Furthermore, the DA is inclined to think that his cartoons possibly incite hatred towards these groups.”

So out goes the accusation of long-term incitation of hatred, no mention anymore of the “making a living out of insulting.” Yet those were yesterday’s reasons for what the DA qualified itself as the reasons for “a longer arrest than normal.”

According to the Dutch DA’s press release, the house search and the arrest were carried out by ten people: a judge, a DA, two DA assistants and six policemen without uniform.

In a telephone interview Nekschot didn’t mention specifically that a policeman told him that “his anonymity would be lost now”, although the loss of his anonymity was discussed.

The strangest thing right now is that the DA claims today, after Nekschot’s arrest and the confiscation of his computer, that it decided that eight cartoons were ‘punishable’ (we suppose that means that the DA wants to put Nekschot on trial for those eight drawings).

Hello? What’s is the chronology here? Does the DA arrest people, raid a house with ten officers, and only then it decides that eight drawings might infringe the law?

Wouldn’t it be more logical if the DA looked at the drawings in 2005 (when the original complaint was filed), judged then and there that indeed, yes or no, there was (or not), “expression in such an insulting way regarding a group of people because of their race or religion that it can be considered as discrimination”, and then go looking for the supposed culprit?

Now it seems to be the other way around. First the Dutch DA tried to find the culprit, and only when they found him they try to stick charges on him.

Strange.