Opinion of lawyer Peter Plasman: 'Response of boss OM to Inez Weski is exactly as it should be: appropriate and concise'
The boss of the Public Prosecutor's Office (OM), Rinus Otte, said he will not read lawyer Inez Weski's book. Journalist Paul Vugts thinks that is a weak response, but lawyer Peter Plasman disagrees, he writes in this submitted piece.
In Het Parool of June 28, Paul Vugts, whom I highly esteem, wrote about the soft line of the OM in Amsterdam, and the hard line of the top of that same OM. Put somewhat black and white: the difference between wanting (for years!) to do a lot but then half, or wanting to do less but then well.
According to Vugts, the highest boss of the OM, Rinus Otte, sees himself as a strong man, averse to criticism. This Otte states in NRC that he is not going to read Inez Weski's book and that, according to Vugts, is a weakness of this strong man, also because Otte did call Weski's claims 'quatsch' on television.
In an earlier column (April 25), under the title "To my surprise, I hear and read how many take Inez Weski's complaints to be true," Vugts wrote the following, among other things: "I also feel sorry for the many people involved in her arrest, detention, security and criminal proceedings, who are not allowed to defend themselves against her serious accusations because their bosses do not consider it chic. Who don't say something appropriately succinct like, 'It's nonsense and we'll prove that in the trial.'"
Her death
The term "quatsch," to which Otte added "complete nonsense," strikes me as exactly the appropriate, concise response from the top executive that Vugts missed in April. Incidentally, contrary to what Vugts now indicates, Otte did not call the claims in Weski's book quatsch on television; he reserved that term for Weski's claim that the Justice Department was out to kill her.
Vugts calls Weski's claims nonsense, the OM is accused by Weski of being out to kill her, quatsch according to Otte, and nevertheless, not reading that book would be a sign of weakness from the strong man Otte. Perhaps there are weaknesses in Otte - who said in NRC that he thinks only two things are very good about himself - but that does not include not wanting to read nonsense.
