Covid conspiracy theorist to appeal incitement conviction; Acquitted on 5 of 6 counts

Willem Engel will appeal against the court of Rotterdam ruling convicting him of incitement and giving him a suspended prison sentence of one month on Friday. The Public Prosecution Service (OM) had demanded 180 hours of community service and a three-month suspended sentence against the leader of the former action group Viruswaarheid. The court acquitted him of five of the six incitement charges against him.

The OM prosecuted the 45-year-old man from Rotterdam for a series of posts about the coronavirus on social media. The court only convicted Engel for a Twitter post to people who wanted to demonstrate on the Malieveld in The Hague, despite the fact that demonstrations were banned in June 2020. The court considered the post a call to commit a criminal offense, because it ignored the local government’s decision not to allow the demonstration.

“By deliberately calling on people to participate in the demonstration, Engel has shown that he cares nothing for the local authorities,” the court said in the verdict. “Engel also fed the unrest in society with this appeal.”

The court acquitted Engel for the other posts, including a tweet in which he called on people to photograph employees of vaccination buses. He also called on his followers to contact a nursing home in Goirle that was closed to visitors due to a coronavirus outbreak.

Another post Engel was on trial for called mayor Hubert Bruls of Nijmegen a “mini-dictator” after he temporarily closed a local restaurant. The court acquitted Engel, saying a call to drink coffee at the mayor’s home was not incitement.

At the end of 2021, 22,581 people signed a collective declaration against Engel and filed it with the OM in Rotterdam. The man spent two weeks in custody last March.

During the trial, Engel argued, among other things, that the court should declare the OM inadmissible because he wasn’t getting a fair trial. The court disagreed. It identified no irregularities - there is no evidence that the Minister of Justice or counter-terrorism coordinator NCTV directed this case against him, nor were there any missing court documents. And according to the court, Engel got a fair chance to defend himself extensively on several court days.

Response

Engel said he would appeal against the ruling, calling it a “politically colored verdict.” He is satisfied that the court acquitted him of five charges. “It was actually exactly what I expected,” he said. “Something had to stick because otherwise, the OM would suffer too much damage.”

“Technically, it is not correct,” Engel said about the only conviction. “We did not call for participation in a banned demonstration, but for a demonstration against the ban,” Engel said.

Legal proceedings are still pending against the merits of the ban on demonstrations on the Malieveld in The Hague on 21 and 28 June 2020. “If that judge says that it was an unlawful ban, which is to be expected, then this verdict must be reversed. Then it was not a call to participate in a banned demonstration.”

The OM said it would study the verdict. It has two weeks to decide whether or not to file an appeal.