Court refuses case against Labour leaders for anti Moroccan speech

PvdA leaders Diederik Samsom and Hans Spekman will not be prosecuted for hate speech on statements they made about Moroccans, the court in Amsterdam ruled on Tuesday. The PVV asked the court to compel the Public Prosecutor to prosecute them for group insult and incitement to discrimination against people because of their race, the Volkskrant reports. This involves the following two statements: In 2008 Spekman said in an interview with Vrij Nederland: "And of jail they only get more status in within their group. You should see that they lose their status. The Moroccans who don't want to behave, you have to humiliate in the eyes of their own people." And in a interview with NRC in December 2011 Samsom said: "It is true that it is mainly Moroccans. These guys have an ethnic monopoly on this kind of nuisance." According to the newspaper, about 140 people pressed charges of discrimination against the two PvdA men. Among them were PVV leader in the Senate Marjolein faber and delegation leader in the European Parliament Marcel de Graaff. They initiated an article 12 procedure to force the Prosecutor to prosecute. The party wants to retaliate for the hate speech trial leader Geert Wilders is currently facing. Wilders is standing trial for statements he made during a campaign rally in The Hague in 2014. He said that The Hague should be " a city with fewer burdens, and if possible fewer Moroccans." A few days later he left his audience chanting "fewer, fewer, fewer" on his question of whether there should be more or fewer Moroccans in the city. According to Wilders, Samsom and Spekman's statements go farther than his own. "If lady Justice is truly blind, such statements would be treated equally", he said. According to the Volkskrant, the court did not even substantively look into the PVV's Article 12 procedure, because the judges found that they are not stakeholders in the case.