Dries Van Langenhove, founder of the far-right Flemish nationalist movement Schild & Vrienden, and six co-defendants will face charges of racism and denialism in a Ghent court on 9 January, following the final rejection of appeals against the presiding judges by the main suspect.
The appeal to the Court of Cassation, presented by Van Langenhove against the decision of the Ghent appeal court, was dismissed on Tuesday. This leaves the composition of the Ghent correctional court, responsible for reviewing the Schild & Vrienden case, unchanged.
Van Langenhove and his lawyer, Hans Rieder, had filed a recusal request on 10 October, prior to the opening of the hearing, against the president of the correctional court, Jan Van de Berghe, and the two other judges in charge of the case. These were three separate requests to be examined separately.
The three judges refused to recuse themselves, and the First Chamber of the Ghent Court of Appeal then had to rule on the recusal requests. However, that court rejected the request, based on the internal regulations governing the assignment of cases to judges.
The defence had been aware of the court’s composition for some time, which made the late appeals unacceptable—an argument endorsed by the appeal court, hence the dismissal of the appeals.
Van Langenhove subsequently turned to the Court of Cassation, only to have his appeals rejected once again.
