Hart voor Den Haag front man Richard de Mos has had his lawyer Peter Plasman file charges against the editors of newspaper Trouw (DPG Media), who recently published a libelous and defamatory article about De Mos.
"The authors of the article unabashedly pull the corruption card towards my person again. I am sick and tired of this unjustified frame, after five years of fighting for my rights, with acquittals at both the Rotterdam District Court and the Court of Appeal in The Hague. Anyone who now still dares to pull the corruption card against my person, I will drag to court," said De Mos, who argues that falsely accusing was explicitly the intention of the drafters. "This is evident not only from the purport of the article, but equally from the literal - defamatory - wording: 'Now a whiff remains around Kroes and De Mos: prosecution has failed to materialize, not because they had nothing on their crimes but because there were no adequate rules.'"
Factual inaccuracies
The article in question contains a number of crucial factual errors that contribute to its character as slander or libel. These errors are so serious that it must be concluded that any critical legal assessment of the text has been lacking. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why in this sensitive legal matter the person of De Mos (but perhaps also that of Mrs. Neelie Kroes) has been criminally damaged in an extremely light-hearted manner.
"With regard to my person, it was stated that there were no grounds to prosecute me. Incorrect, I have been prosecuted up to and including the highest factual court for a long time, during which I was deprived of 5 years of my life. At the end of the article it is again incorrectly stated: "prosecution failed", suggesting at the end that the judge did not rule on my person. Moreover, the terminology "did not proceed" suggests a situation in which the prosecution/condemnation should have taken place. The reader is blatantly misled here. A shame and unworthy of a quality newspaper like Trouw," according to De Mos.
