Chamber again lifts Van Langenhove’s immunity | Interior

Van Langenhove already lost his parliamentary immunity in March 2021 as a result of the criminal investigation into his Schild & Vrienden movement. The new case revolves around doctoral researcher Sebastiaan Van Severen. In March 2018, he wrote internal information about Schild & Vrienden, the radical right-wing group that Van Langenhove founded, on an anonymous Twitter account.

However, it did not take long before Van Severen’s identity was revealed and Van Langenhove shared an article on his Facebook page in which the researcher was accused of distributing personal data of students close to Schild & Vrienden. Shortly afterwards, the researcher received death threats and filed a complaint against Van Langenhove and unknown persons.

The court then started an investigation, which was explained by the Attorney General at the Court of Appeal of Ghent in the Parliamentary Committee on Prosecutions. It came to light, among other things, that the Public Prosecution Service believes that there should be doubt in favor of Van Langenhove, but a majority of the committee members pointed out that the council chamber can nevertheless order a referral to the criminal court. However, for that to happen, Langenhove’s parliamentary immunity must be lifted. The committee ruled by five votes to one that the conditions for this have been met.

The plenary Chamber followed the committee during the plenary session on Thursday evening. Vlaams Belang and N-VA also voted against the lifting of Van Langenhove’s parliamentary immunity.

The latter also opposed this before the vote. According to the far-right Member of Parliament, he has been the object of a “witch hunt” for four years and the Attorney General and the public prosecutor’s office have already concluded that he has not made any criminal threats in the file. Vlaams Belang chairman Tom Van Grieken spoke of a “political persecution”.