On an episode of Dutch television program Advocaat van de Duivel (The Devil’s Advocate) airing last month, a civil jury of five found Osama bin Laden not guilty on the charges of ordering and financing the attacks of September 11, 2001, and being the head of Al Qaeda.
The immigration debate in the Netherlands has been heated, and this episode will no doubt contribute to the intensity. After Theo Van Gogh’s murder in 2004, the growing Muslim minority has been on the receiving end of a great deal of anger and fear, while Dutch citizens have been justifiably worried about a repeat of such a despicable act of extremist violence.
Three indictments were raised against the accused;
- Bin Laden planned and ordered the 9/11 attacks
- Bin Laden is the leader of Al Qaeda, a global terrorist network
- Bin Laden is, himself, a terrorist
Acting as defense counsel was star defense attorney Gerard Spong, who has been central to the immigration debate and is supporting legal action against anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders.
Serving as prosecutors and attempting to rebut Mr. Spong’s defense were America correspondent and expert Charles Groenhuijsen, and terrorism expert and Dutch-American Glenn Schoen.
Spong speaks of a quickness to find a scapegoat and xenophobia as the justification for Bin Laden so quickly becoming America’s #1 target after 9/11. He relates of a Dutch Muslim “forcefully arrested, because of a telephone call from Brussels about a family relation with an uncle in Madrid. Released within 24 hours. A mistake,” as a parallel to the “mistake” that said there was a connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq.
In arguing that Al Qaeda is nothing but a “phantom”, the defense more or less debunks the theory, put forth by Donald Rumsfeld, of a series of highly complex and advanced underground cave bases in and around Tora Bora which housed Bin Laden and Al Qaeda terrorists.
“A patsy is being sought. That’s very convenient,” said Spong.
Finally, Spong argues that Bin Laden is not a terrorist, but more correctly a “freedom fighter,” and goes as far as to compare him to Nelson Mandela, and Al Qaeda to the ANC in South Africa.
The jury of 5 all represent different political parties – though if party names are consistent across the continents, most but not all are what Americans would call “liberal.”
After some heated deliberation, the jury comes back with a verdict of not guilty on the first and second charges, and guilty on the third charge.
“The jury does, by majority of votes, not consider Osama bin Laden responsible for the attacks of 9/11, because in our opinion too little hard, undisputed evidence has been produced.
The jury considers it a fact that Al Qaeda exists, but that he’s the undisputed leader of the organization is something the jury has doubts over.
Almost unanimously the jury considers him a terrorist because he, unlike Nelson Mandela, practices terror worldwide.”
It’s unlikely that we will find much edification in a 33-minute television program from the country that brought us “Big Brother,” but the jury’s verdict is not just controversial – perhaps it shines some light on why the previous administration was never able to successfully prosecute any significant number of the captured “terrorists”; they could never have proved anything in a fair trial.
Watch the entire episode here. (Dutch language, English subtitles).
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