Lawyer Peter Schouten, colleague and bosom friend of the murdered Peter R. de Vries, had planned on Tuesday to follow the criminal process in the professional ‘lawyer mode’. That largely worked. “Until his children Royce and Kelly made use of their right to speak. That touched me deeply and then I let myself go for a while.” Peter R. de Vries was shot in Amsterdam on 6 July last year.
Schouten speaks of a difficult day. He was not sitting there as a lawyer, but as a friend of Peter R. de Vries. “It was a long session, from nine to five. I wanted to follow everything closely. I wanted to hear every speck of evidence and analyze everything. I have rarely worked so hard in a courtroom as a lawyer.”
“What are you talking about. It made me tired.”
The suspects were 22-year-old Delano G. from Rotterdam and co-defendant Kamil E. on Tuesday before the court in Amsterdam. “At one point I got a headache from Kamil E. He was almost surprised that he was a suspect. I thought: ‘what are you talking about’. It made me tired.”
Expressing his anger was the last thing the Breda lawyer wanted to do at that moment. “That gives you a negative feeling and it doesn’t do you much good. I wanted to attend the hearing as a lawyer myself and see if there would be new cases from the file. I am not insensitive but wanted to follow the process in a businesslike manner. I I’m sure Peter would have done his trial that way too.”
“Intercepted text messages were harsh and disrespectful.”
The demand for a life sentence did not surprise Schouten in the least. “It was almost inevitable. The degree of premeditation was very high. The intercepted texts were harsh and disrespectful.”
What feeling prevailed with Peter Schouten? Anger or the sadness? “Certainly not the anger. I had the sadness of Peter’s death from July to February, then I started to process it. Now let justice prevail.”
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