MAASTRICHT - The court in Maastricht is considering taking lawyer S. Weening as a hostage. Weening had been called yesterday as a witness in the "murder case-Nijswiller," but invoked his right to privilege in all the court's questions.According to the court, he is not entitled to all questions. "You are complicating the proceedings," said court president M. Kramer.
Weening will have some time to reconsider, but if he sticks to his position and refuses to answer, he risks being detained in a house of detention. That is a coercive measure the court can apply to unwilling witnesses.
The Maastricht lawyer was counsel for the Chinese woman 36, who together with her boyfriend also 36, he is still on trial, was suspected of murdering her compatriot Cha in Nijswiller last September. This suspect, who initially stated she had nothing to do with her friend's death, took her own life in women's prison Ter Peel. Just before she did so, she declared that it was not her friend, but she who killed Cha, a statement she retracted a day before her suicide. Her attorney Weening has consistently maintained his conviction that his client only took the blame to relieve her boyfriend. Weening's conviction ended up in this side and the court wanted to ask him some questions about it, but the lawyer feels obliged to remain silent for reasons of principle. "If a client tells a lawyer something, he should be able to trust that that information will not come out in a public hearing," Weening said.
Both prosecutor C. Ament and attorney G. van Tilborg of the male suspect Gang L., feel that if Weening were to make a statement at all, it would not add to the evidence. Ament already asked the court in March to acquit L. of murder or manslaughter because of insufficient evidence. The court apparently doubted the man's innocence and reopened the case by interlocutory ruling to hear some witnesses.
On July 4, the case continues with the hearing of the physician-pathologist from the Netherlands Forensic Institute who examined the body of the murdered Cha. When attorney Weening is expected to return to the hearing as a witness is not yet known. The court does consider it important that he answer, said Chairman Kramer: "You will have the opportunity to think again."
