GENHOUT/MAASTRICHT - In the reopened case of an attempted manslaughter of a policeman in Genhout, a witness was again arrested in court yesterday for allegedly lying. With that, a total of four witnesses are now suspected of perjury.
An officer was nearly hit on Oct. 15 last year while investigating a stolen trailer at the Genhout campground. The officer believed he recognized 27-year-old Roy B. of Beek as the driver of the car. Four witnesses claimed that was not possible. B. would have been at a party in Geleen at the time. The prosecutor attached more value to the officer's reading. During the first hearing, on Jan. 24, three witnesses were therefore already arrested on suspicion of perjury: B.'s girlfriend, B.'s father and an acquaintance. The fourth witness was not present then. In the case reopened yesterday, that fourth witness still spoke under oath. Even after court president Van den Berg had suggested to him that three months in jail is common for perjury, the man (the father of B.'s girlfriend) stated that Roy was at the party. The officer also had this witness picked up
Lawyer Serge Weening of Roy B. felt that the trial should not really have been reopened at all and spoke of "a circus in which the prosecutor asks for an encore. After all, the court had closed the hearing on Jan. 24 and was already deliberating on the verdict. The prosecutor then sent the court a letter with new facts, upon which the court reopened the case "to give the defense an opportunity to respond to those facts. According to Weening, once the investigation is closed, a court should have no further contact with involved parties. Now that that has happened anyway, he predicts that lawyers will also endlessly delay cases by coming up with "new facts" between the closure of the investigation and the verdict.
The new facts concerned the elaborate interrogations of the first three witnesses suspected of perjury. Two stuck to their story, the third now doubts the date of the party in Geleen. B. was sentenced to nearly six years in prison. The verdict is March 6.
