The challenge chamber of the court in Assen has rejected the challenge request of lawyer Yehudi Moszkowicz. The lawyer objected this afternoon to a question posed by one of the judges. In that, he said, there was a judgment. The challenge room thinks that is not the case. That means the court can proceed with the case.
During the handling of the case, one of the judges referred to a statement that suspect Josef B. made to the police after his arrest. He said he was angry with Israel, the eldest of the six children who lived with father Gerrit Jan van D. in Ruinerwold, because he ran away in 2019, bringing the family into the public eye. He called Israel a traitor, because he could have just left without disclosing it to the world.
B. didn’t want to explain anything today. The judge said she wanted to ask the handyman of the Ruinerwold family, if he was willing to answer, if he still felt that way. She also mentioned that it was difficult to leave the family without papers. Father Van D. had never declared his youngest children to the registry office, so that the children in fact did not exist.
Moszkowicz retaliated against the court because the latter is part of the indictment against Josef B. He is suspected of involvement in deprivation of liberty by Gerrit Jan van D., partly because the children were never registered anywhere, so that they were not free to come and go. where they wanted. The lawyer believed that the judge had in fact already convicted Josef B. because of the way she asked the question. And that while judges must be independent. They may only form a judgment after the case, including demand and plea.
“There is no judgment in that question,” said the chairman of the challenge chamber after a short consultation. That means that the three judges sitting on the case can continue as usual. The court ruled that the case will continue at 7 p.m. tonight. Then the Public Prosecution Service comes with its sentence and Moszkowicz goes to plead.
In addition to deprivation of liberty, B. is also suspected of mistreatment of the nine children of religious maniac Van D. According to the Public Prosecution Service, he would not have done this himself. Van D. was the one who dealt the blows and sometimes separated the children from each other for a long time, but B. made sure that he could do it, say the eldest four children of the family: Israel and the three children who gave the family for the move to Ruinerwold in 2010.