A prominent Dutch television reporter pleaded not guilty in an Australian court yesterday to disobeying a police order to stay away from an international crime suspect.
Television journalist Peter de Vries and colleague Chantal van Schuylenburgh were arrested last week after officials said they visited a property in Perth, Western Australia, several times despite being warned by police to stay away.
De Vries, 53, said they were trying to contact a suspect in the slaying of Dutch woman Mariska Mast, who died while vacationing in Honduras in 2008. Interpol lists the man as wanted by a Honduran court for alleged crimes against life and health.
PHOTO: EPA
Yesterday, De Vries pleaded not guilty to disobeying a move-on order in Perth Magistrates Court, arguing he had a “reasonable excuse” for failing to comply with the instructions. In a statement to reporters, de Vries said he just wanted to talk to the man to hear his side of the story.
De Vries is the Netherlands’ highest-profile crime reporter. He made global headlines for a 2008 show about the disappearance of US teenager Natalee Holloway in Aruba.
It was based on hidden-camera interviews with Joran van der Sloot, the Dutch man last seen with Holloway before her disappearance on May 30, 2005.
De Vries told journalists outside court that he thought his treatment by Australian police was “out of proportion” to what he had done.
“I think I did nothing wrong,” he said. “It’s very hard to plead guilty when you don’t feel guilty.”
Van Schuylenburgh pleaded guilty on Saturday to the same charge, was fined A$200 (US$178) and charged A$62.50 in court costs.
De Vries’ case was adjourned until Sept. 7, when a trial date will be set. The journalist said he planned to fly back to the Netherlands last night and didn’t know if he would return for the trial.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema