Geert Wilders Trial Halted Over Bias of Judicial Panel

The London Guardian reports that on Friday the trial in the Netherlands of far-right political leader Geert Wilders was halted as a separate panel of judges ruled that the panel hearing hate speech charges against Wilders was biased. Wilders is charged with inciting hatred and discrimination against Muslims after urging that the Qur'an be banned (see prior posting) and production of a film titled Fitna.  Distributed online, the video equates Islam with violence. (See prior posting.) The move to disqualify the judicial panel came after it refused to permit Wilders to call as a witness a Dutch professor of Arabic studies, Hans Jansen.  Originally the Dutch prosecution service refused to file charges against Wilders, but an appeals court ordered charges to be brought. (See prior posting.) Now it appears that Tom Schalken, one of the appeals court judges who was involved in issuing that order, had dinner with Prof. Jansen and tried to convince him of the correctness of the decision to press charges against Wilders.