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Willem Engel’s 60-hour community-service sentence for two statements made during the coronavirus pandemic is now final after the Dutch Supreme Court dismissed his appeal.
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The Dutch Supreme Court dismissed Willem Engel’s appeal in cassation on 29 September, making his conviction for incitement and 60-hour community-service sentence final. The Hague Court of Appeal imposed the sentence in March 2025 over two statements Engel made during the coronavirus pandemic. [2] [1]
The first was a Facebook livestream on 26 June 2020 in which Engel urged people to attend a demonstration planned for The Hague’s Malieveld, after regional authorities had banned it. A judge upheld the ban the following day. The second was a November 2021 tweet that the appeal court interpreted as encouraging coronavirus infections among people under 70 without health complaints, and as inciting breaches of measures intended to limit transmission. [2]
The appeal court acquitted Engel over four other charged statements, including an allegation of inciting violence against public authorities. [5] [3]
Before the ruling, advocate general T.N.B.M. Spronken had recommended reconsidering the conviction concerning the demonstration call, questioning whether criminal intervention had been sufficiently justified. She did not recommend overturning the tweet conviction. The Supreme Court rejected the appeal and found that, in this case, the conviction and sentence were compatible with the rights to freedom of expression and assembly. [4] [2]
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