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A short record of a day in court

massive media attention for the case

Before heading to court today i was reading the Belgian
newspapers and I could only notice that the media was
trying to redeem itself by posting some columns denouncing
the political process against us. Also some Opinion
articles were published written by opponents and supporters
of the AEL but all agreeing that the whole thing is a
political process.

In this atmosphere we entered the court room, to be present
at a trial that in a democracy should not even take place.
The session was opened with some technical communications
and the court agreed on hearing the defence witnesses and
watching the uncut TV footage of that night.

First the footage was played and it showed clearly that:

1- You could not really speak of real riots and that the
situation was rather tense at the scene but not more than
that

2- The AEL militants were clearly calming the youth and
trying to create a buffer between them and the police

3- My arrival did not have any escalating effect on the
crowd

4- we tried to negotiate calmly with the police but the
response was individual pepper-spray deployed against me
and others around me.

5- after the pepper-spray incident we kept our composure

After the tape was played came the turn of the witnesses,

the first witness was Luc Lamine, the chief of police of
that time with whom I had a verbal confrontation after I
was attacked with pepper-spray. Lamine had been cited
saying that my role was aggressive and negative. Later he
declared the opposite of that in an interview. Today he was
confronted with this contradiction in his story, he said
that he didn't sign the declaration that was accusing me of
incitement, and that it doesn't represent the complete
truth as he knows it. He said that before my arrival the
police was ready to intervene and the situation was
extremely tens, and that upon my arrival I asked the crowd
to sit down and recite a sort of a prayer for the murdered
brother, and that helped in calming the situation. Lamine
added that during the verbal confrontation we had he could
clearly see that my eyes were red and the symptoms of
pepper-spray were visible on my face, he said that
pepper-spray was used before the confrontation I had with
him. He was asked by the Judge if he felt insulted by my
words he denied that he felt insulted and said that me and
him understood each-others function. He finally said that,
after the verbal confrontation, I helped in calming down
the situation and lead the demonstration into a nearby
mosque.

An interesting detail is that when Lamine was saying that
he wasn't insulted by me, the judge was trying to convince
him that he was. The judge was telling him that he must
have been insulted as police-chief and he kept repeating
that while Lamine did not say that. At that moment our
lawyers intervened and made it clear to the judge that he
has no right to put words in the mouth of the witness. This
is a very disturbing indicator.

However, the testimony of Lamine came close to the truth
and destroyed the case of the public prosecutor on
incitement completely.

After Lamine, Jef Lambrecht a journalist that is known to
be a critic of our movement testified that my role there
was not negative and that he was following me the whole
evening and did not see any incitement from my part at any
moment.

Then came Ludo De Witte who testified as second hand
witness in the name of the anonymous officer who also was
observing me and said that i played a calming role the
whole evening and that the other officer that testified
against me was lying and was not even in the neighborhood.
The officer testifying in our favour wants to stay
anonymous out of fear, this alone says enough about the
whole matter.

After the witnesses, and due to a surrealistically dumb
court-clerk that can not type and can not print and needs
an hour to understand and report a testimony of 10 minutes,
the court was out of time. So we had to adjourn the process
till September. So because of the incompetence of a clerk I
have now to take the plane again in September and come to
Belgium and lose more of my time on a political scandalous
process that should not even be there from the beginning.

After seeing its amateur and tendentious way of working, I
am strengthened in my distrust of the judicial system in
Belgium, and I believe that they are after a conviction,
maybe one without a prison sentence in the light of the
partly shifting public opinion, but either way they are
looking for a conviction in order to give the
establishement a way out. I hope I will be proven wrong by
this court, but I doubt it. Either way we will fight any
conviction and take it all the way to the European court of
human rights in Strasbourg.

+

Police racism in Belgium: They are falling apart!

After the declaration of police chief Luk Lamine in our
case on Monday things started moving, another police chief
who is facing charges of excessive use of violence and who
was convicted to 4 years in jail felt provoked by the
performance of Lamine and declared the following " we
received the orders from Lamine to operate hard that
night=85. he rounded out several police chiefs and told us to
intervene in a hard way=85. everybody who was from Moroccan
origin that day was a target and could be dealt with heavy
handedly and arrested=85.. it had no importance whether he
did something wrong or not, being Moroccan was enough=85. it
was party-time within the police force=85.. some agents even
came back from vacation especially to participate in the
action against the scum, several platoons operated in the
neighborhood of Borgerhout heavy handedly and believe me
the youth felt this very well".

De Bie told us what we already know, there is racism within
the police corps and the witch hunt against ethnic minority
is a continuous fact, However it is the first time that
such a clear testimony is made from within the police. The
AEL always tried to confront the Belgian society with this
racism and when we organised our civil patrols to observe
the police in order to document its abuse, the whole
country was defending the men in blue and attacking us.
They claimed that we were doing a provocation and they have
the nerve to tell that still. The real provocation is
racism and abuse, and if the society is not provoked by
that, then there is something wrong with this society.

Now that the AEL is on the offensive and raising the
pressure on the people responsible of these crimes against
society, they are starting to panic and expose each-other.
We are putting them under pressure and they are making
mistakes. And therefore the AEL will initiate judicial
steps against the police in Antwerp based upon the
declarations of Debie. Another time the AEL is proving why
it is there and what is its function.