18th day, 4th of august 2005

18th day of trial, 04. august 2005. against José Fernandez Delgado, Bart de Geeter, Gabriel and Begonia Pombo da Silva

The trial began sharply with a delay of 30 minutes. Nothing changed about Gabriels clothing and the expression of solidarity by the supporters. The accused were in a good mood, but the court seemed to be pretty pissed off. It is obvious they wanna come to end with the trial.

The application for Jose not being criminal liable was rejected in the beginning.

The defense made new applications for evidence. After that Gabriels lawyer, Poell, applied for hearing an expert of the Berlin centre for support of victims of torture to render an opinion on Gabriels criminal liability cos of the consequences of torture in confinement in isolation during his years in spanish prisons. This should be done by considering the documents of a trial that took place in 1997 when it had been considered that Gabriel might not be criminal liable. Josés lawyer applied for hearing Dr. Rieger of the Federal Criminal Police Office about the improvement of technical means in image processing. Barts lawyer, Lindemann, made an application to hear another witness who could have seen in Helifaxstreet how Bart run disorientated past the Mercedes and watched the scenario from distance and just got in the car later on.

All of three applicatiosn were rejected by the prosecutor. The one of Gabriel with the explanation that it is of no relevance to the trial, the one of José cos of intentional delay of the trial and the one by Bart cos these are only presumptions. After the interjection of his second lawyer, Scholz, regarding the default of the prosecutor to investigate about that witness the sitting was interupted for 3 hours so the judges could discuss the applications.

After the break the rendering of another opinion about Gabriels criminal liability was rejected cos there is no reason to question Dr. Jankowskis expert opinion. The other two applications were allowed. The witness of the Helifaxstreet should be heard on august 24th. Dr. Rieger on the same day.

Judge Nohl announced there will be no trial tomorrow, august 5th, and decided august 24th to be be the next day in court, at 10:00. After that he wanted to discuss with lawyers and joint plantiff about another 10 dates till end of 2005.

Before Bart, José and Gabriel were guided out of the court room it was possible to communicate a bit.