1 February 2007

AMSTERDAM — The guardian of three-year-old Savanna who was killed in September 2004 will be prosecuted.

The guardian’s lawyer, Simeon Burmeister, claims the legal investigation that led to the decision to continue the prosecution has not been reliable. In his opinion, the driving factor behind it was not the factual evidence, but the emotional reaction that the case had caused.

Burmeister and his colleague Brigitte Roodveldt will appeal to the Prosecution Office in The Hague to drop the charges against the guardian. 
The prosecution accuses the guardian of having ignored the signs of abuse to which Savanna was subjected and which eventually led to the child’s death.

The legal investigation lasted from March 2005 until August 2006 and involved 35 witnesses, including Savanna’s mother and her partner. Both received jail sentences for the murder.

The prosecution is demanding that Savanna’s guardian be sentenced to community service and banned from working with children in the future.

Childcare workers staged a number of protests in December last year against the prosecution of their colleague.

[Copyright Expatica News + ANP 2007]

Subject: Dutch news