Trial Pellikaan postponed due to lack of competent interpreter in court
Former CSR president Noah Pellikaan was due to appear in court this morning in connection with last year’s out-of-control protests, but at the very last minute, the trial was postponed due to lack of a proper interpreter for the American-Dutch UvA student.
The judge decided that the interpreter present was not sufficiently capable of providing Pellikaan with the correct translation. The interpreter would not have been well understood and since Pellikaan does not speak Dutch, that proved to be a problem. After the accused and his entourage had been waiting in the hall of the court for just under half an hour, the judge’s redeeming word came: the trial was postponed. Pellikaan and his girlfriend reacted visibly distressed to this anticlimax. Pellikaan’s lawyer, Krit Zeegers, spoke of “an embarrassing situation”. The case has been rescheduled for Thursday 15 May.
Last May, several large-scale pro-Palestine protests took place on the Roeterseiland campus and other UvA locations. This included a lot of vandalism. Noah Pellikaan (then Activist Party) attended and participated in these, or at least he is accused of doing so. He was also chairman of the CSR at the time. Earlier, at a court hearing, he did not want to give his name, but it soon emerged that it was the chairman of the CSR.
Pellikaan is suspected of throwing stones and spraying paint and water at the police during the riots at the Binnengasthuisterrein. The public prosecutor earlier demanded three months in prison against the student.
