Amsterdam Chief Justice Looking for Sources in Badr Hari Case

Last Updated on Friday, 07 January 2011 07:12 Thursday, 06 January 2011 17:18

Written by Dave Walsh

This is a follow-up to the article from the other day about Badr Hari and commentators on crimesite.nl reporting news about the Amsterdam assault from last February at the night club BlinQ (thanks to reader Ramon for translation help). Wim van den Pol of the website considers himself a journalist and the readers who comment on his articles as "sources." Like any media source, he claims, he refuses to disclose their personal information. Amsterdam officials believe otherwise, that van den Pol is a "telecommunications provider" and must abide by those laws -- which means to hand over IP addresses of those posting comments on his site so that they can be questioned and used as witnesses in the case.

How serious are officials? Van den Pol might be arrested if the IP addresses of the users are not forwarded to Amsterdam officials. That is pretty serious and shows just how much attention this case is garnering at this point in time. Officials are doing more research into the matter currently, with the investigation "frozen" until they can conclude if van den Pol is truly, legally considered a "journalist" or as an operator of a website, simply a telecommunications network provider.

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