Levan V. was the first to answer for this relatively new phenomenon in court. On June 18 of this year, he stabbed a 45-year-old woman with a needle in the back of her thigh during the dance festival Den Haag Outdoor in the Zuiderpark.
The woman herself felt nothing, but witnesses saw it happening and warned her. The festival’s medical service and emergency physicians at Haga Hospital found a puncture hole in her leg. According to the witnesses, Levan V. would have stabbed even more people with the needle.
Levan V. himself denied having stabbed people. He turned out to have a syringe in his pocket. He had used it to inject himself with a mixture of crack and heroin because he had a toothache, Levan V claimed.
He would previously have claimed to the festival security guards who grabbed him that he had diabetes, and therefore walked with a syringe in his pocket. That was a misunderstanding due to his poor English, claimed Levan V. on Tuesday at the police judge. He had only said “sugar, sugar” several times to indicate that the same type of syringe is used by diabetic patients.
The public prosecutor demanded a prison sentence of three months, but the judge did not think that did justice to the seriousness of the incident. “It should be clear to everyone that what you have done will not be tolerated. This just has to stop.”
Appeal
Levan V. will appeal, he said immediately after the verdict. “I am innocent. I have never hurt or harmed anyone.”
His lawyer Pieter Hoogendam criticized the lack of research into the matter. For example, there are no reports from the medical service of the festival, nor from the emergency physicians of the Haga Hospital. Unlike the public prosecutor, the lawyer did not find it very clear that the red spot from which a photo was taken is a puncture hole.
The judge rejected his request to hear the people from the medical service and the doctors as witnesses, and also the research requested by Hoogendam into DNA on the injection needle. According to the lawyer, the entire case is based on assumptions rather than facts, and the speed with which the Public Prosecution Service wanted to bring this case to court should not be at the expense of due care.
Uncertainty about HIV or hepatitis
The victim who was present in the courtroom is still uncertain about whether she became infected with HIV or hepatitis due to the contaminated needle. She won’t know for sure until October. Her insecurity, the unrest in society that had arisen and Levan V.’s silence about his motives, the magistrate judged the Georgian heavily. “During a festival you should enjoy carefree and not have to look over your shoulder all the time,” he said.