Bommeleeër Trial: 2014


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Marengo

Marengo

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This might be a stupid question but what is so wrong with seeing Prince Jean near a sight that was bombed? Is someone insinuating he was the bomber?
 
As far as I have understood of the whole story, yes, someone insinuated that Prince Jean was the bomber or however that he was implied in the bombing.
However, it seems that Prince Jean that day was actually in France, guest of a shooting party or something similar, and Prince Guillaume was with him or however he can confirm Jean's alibi.
 
Why would the prince take part in any bombings? What would possibly be the motive?

I have been asking this questions on various board for months, and have been met each time with total silence.:ermm:
 
:previous:
Are Prince Jean and Prince Guillaume summoned to a court due to some legal technicality? The reason to summon seems unbelievable.
 
:previous:
Thanks for additional information!:flowers:
The case is quite confusing. It is quite unfortunate that Hereditary Duke Guillaume is dragged to a court.
 
Al_bina said:
:previous:
Thanks for additional information!:flowers:
The case is quite confusing. It is quite unfortunate that Hereditary Duke Guillaume is dragged to a court.
Click to expand...

It is not the Hereditary Grand Duke but his uncle with the same name.
 
:previous:
Thanks for the clarification!
Well, it must be still unpleasant for the Grand Ducal family to deal with the situation.
 
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Read the article listed and a lot of what I read made no sense to me. What would be the purpose of motive of this, first of all.
 
Join the club...the entire thing is bizarre and confusing. I don't understand the motive here, except as a possible way to embarrass and discredit the Grand Ducal house.
 
It is bizarre and confusing indeed, but I found the last article of Sydney a great help to understand it a bit.
These conspiracy theories usually seem far fetched though, and the secret service using prince Jean to plant bombs seems utterly rediculous. But still, the prince is in court and hopefully he can clear his name for good.
 
There is no big motive that Prince Jean could have had but the problem is that even almost thirty years after the bombings, the police and prosecutors cannot find anyone who would have a plausible motive to plant the bombs. Those currently accused are said to have planted the bombs to achieve increased funding for law enforcement. If you follow the Bommeleeër trial, you will notice that a lot of the things said during the court hearings are either rumours or hearsay. Prince Jean's name pops up here and there during the trials. Yesterday, there was a former policeman who told that he had been told that "one of the princes" and "the grand ducal court" were somehow involved with the bombings but he didn't know any specifics.

Imagine that there is a series of bombings in the United Kingdom now and the police cannot for the life of them can find out how has planted the bombs. Suddenly Buckingham Palace announces that Prince Harry has given up his right to the throne for military reasons. But Harry continues his military career like he has always done and nothing changes in the way it is handled. One day, a policeman says that Prince Harry might have been involved in the planting of the bombs and sometime later someone comes forward and tells that they have seen Harry at the sight of one of the bombings. Suddenly gossip on the street starts that Prince Harry has always been friends with someone else who is implicated to have played a role in the bombings and that Harry as received a very large amount of money from his family so that he would give up his rights to the throne. In addition, it is common knowledge that Harry or his brother had once written a threatening letter to their grandmother.

Nothing of this is proof that the prince (Jean in the actual case or Harry in the hypothetical one) was the bomber but all the little details seem to come together and suddenly an urban legend is born.
 
Wow. I am even more confused than ever. But the situation sounds nothing at all like what I read described on another Board where one particularly overwrought and perpetually dishonest poster seems to be insinuating that it's common knowledge in the streets of Luxembourg that the one of the princes is guilty, and that D-Day has arrived, and indeed the monarchy is about to fall over this matter, blah blah etc etc:bang:.

Thanks much, Sydney.:cool::whistling:
 
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I know my question may be slightly off-topic, but what is this story of the threatening letter written by a Luxembourg Prince to Grand Duke Jean?
 
I don't think any details are known. It was in 1978 and the police classified it as a stupid boy's prank. Considering the age of Grand Duke Henri and Prince Jean at the time, I guess it was Prince Guillaume who was 15 and probably he and his friends thought it would be funny or something along those lines.
 
Moonmaiden23 said:
Wow. I am even more confused than ever. But the situation sounds nothing at all like what I read described on another Board where one particularly overwrought and perpetually dishonest poster seems to be insinuating that it's common knowledge in the streets of Luxembourg that the one of the princes is guilty, and that D-Day has arrived, and indeed the monarchy is about to fall over this matter, blah blah etc etc:bang:.

Thanks much, Sydney.:cool::whistling:
Click to expand...

I think it is best not to adress opinions about posts or posters of other boards here. Instead I think it is more fruitful to go to such boards and write down your concerns there. :flowers:
 
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Moonmaiden23 said:
Wow. I am even more confused than ever. But the situation sounds nothing at all like what I read described on another Board where one particularly overwrought and perpetually dishonest poster seems to be insinuating that it's common knowledge in the streets of Luxembourg that the one of the princes is guilty, and that D-Day has arrived, and indeed the monarchy is about to fall over this matter, blah blah etc etc:bang:.

Thanks much, Sydney.:cool::whistling:
Click to expand...

The whole Bommeleeër Affair is rather shadowy with lots of unknown components.

Prince Jean would have had two possible motives that I can think of, either he hated is family so much that he somehow wanted to hurt them but as to do that he would have needed to confess the bombings and not have him kept out of the trial or he was very much in favour of his family and thus wanted to "protect" the institution on monarchy but letting the people think that Communist had actually planted those bombs. Both do not seem very believable to me. The third option would be that he tried to blackmail them into giving him money but nothing indicates that he was ever given anything for giving up his rights. Again, the Luxembourgish public did not know about the birth of Marie-Gabrielle so that might have played a major role in people thinking that "business reasons" can't be all the reasons why he gave up his claims to the throne considering that his older brother already had three sons at the time and Jean had thus slipped to fourth place in the succession.

And just think about it, would the Grand Ducal Family have kept in such a close contact with Prince Jean over all these years if they'd knew that he was (one of) the person(s) who planted about 20 bombs in Luxembourg!?
 
Prince Jean would have nothing to gain by being involved in such a plot and everything to lose (his reputation and his freedom for one thing). The motives of those who were involved in the bombings according to what I've read on this forum were to increase law enforcement funding and to shift the political power more to the right or to have a more conservative government in Luxembourg.

The people who have said that Prince Jean was involved in this haven't said what his motive was. If would be very strange for someone to be involved with the planting of bombs and not have some motive behind being involved.

It also quite possible that someone who knew about this or was involved in it disliked Prince Jean or as others have said previously were angry with the royal family over something and to get back at them would make statements that would be difficult to prove one way or another.

What strange about this case is there is a lot of information out there about it but a lot of it makes no sense and there is no rhyme or reason to it.

I would think if you met someone who was royal and especially those in law enforcement, you would remember everything about the meeting, the date, time, place, what they were wearing, what they said, etc. This seems to be lacking in the testimony which makes it questionable.
 
nascarlucy said:
Prince Jean would have nothing to gain by being involved in such a plot and everything to lose (his reputation and his freedom for one thing). The motives of those who were involved in the bombings according to what I've read on this forum were to increase law enforcement funding and to shift the political power more to the right or to have a more conservative government in Luxembourg.
Click to expand...

Only the bold part is the proposed motive of the accused, the other part would be a possible motive for a Stay Behind operation. I think it's understandable that many people doubt that those currently accused did the bombings for the above motive which seems very weak and general. Everyone within the BMG and/or police could have done it for that reason.
 
luxarazzi has two new articles about the trial.

1) Luxarazzi : Louis Giscard d'Estaing Summoned

Louis Giscard d'Estaing is summoned by the court. G d'E is the alibi of Prince Jean, as they were hunting in France.

- Is this the G d'E son who was rumoured to have dated princess Margaretha? Or is that his elder brother, who is now married to a Jkvr. Sickinghe?

2) Luxarazzi : Prince Guillaume As Bommeleeër? Or Not?!

And another article showing the confusion: was it Jean, Guillaume or Jean after all who was seen?

- It is curious that nobody came forward to say that they have seen the prince. People heard from other people ... etc. Not a very strong case it seems.
 
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:previous:
Thanks for the udpates!
The testimonies have not added anything interesting to the case. Some people may question reasons/causes for giving up the succession rights. As far as I understand, there is no solid evidence or witnesses linking Prince Jean to the alleged crime. I am not sure how admissible hearsay is.
Hopefully the case will be dismissed due to lack/absence of elements of the crime.
 
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Al-bina I agree with you, it should be dismissed. It is the flimsiest most bizarre "case" against HRH imaginable.

I am not sure something like this would have ever come to trial here in the U.S.!
 
It seems a weak case indeed. But better to get to the bottom of it so the episode can be resolved once and for all. It seems that they are focussing on one specific date (when Jean was supposed to be seen)
and not on all dates of the bombings (20 bombs within 20 months).

The testemonial of Helene Vestur is interesting. She confirms what many always assumed, namely that the late GDss Josephine-Charlotte was very much against the wedding of Jean and her. It seems that GD Henri and GDss Maria Teresa have a different opinion since Vestur was invited to the weddings of Guillaume and Félix. Vestur must be a thorough lady btw, still keeping her agenda from 28 years ago.

Prince Guillaume apparently lost much of his memory due to his coma. Sadly enough he has no recollection of his wedding or the births of his eldest three children.
 
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Imo it´s ridiculous, I bet some just wanted to stir up trouble. Luxembourg is also a small country, to see one of the RF members is not unusual.
 
Marengo said:
It seems a weak case indeed. But better to get to the bottom of it so the episode can be resolved once and for all. It seems that they are focussing on one specific date (when Jean was supposed to be seen) and not on all dates of the bombings (20 bombs within 20 months).
Click to expand...

This. Of course it has never been a strong case against Prince Jean but there also isn't a strong case against those put on trial. There is no concrete evidence against them, more of a trial based on circumstantial evidence. I found it very striking that when Hélène Vestur told that all the rumours and implications were hard on the family and especially the children, one of the accused said that he understood how they felt and was sorry as it is the same with his family. There is no one who (possibly falsely) claimed to have seen either of the accused at one of the sites of the bombings.

I have been following the case for the past year, sometimes more closely and at other time more losely and it feels like a web of a gazillion different things and it's very difficult to distinguish right from wrong. It wouldn't surprise me if it was a cover up for something or someone, a great number of evidence has vanished over the years and so it is very much based on witness statements and hearsay. There is more than one person - among others Beffort who claimed to have seen Prince Jean at the airport - who say that either police forces or people from the secret service came to them and threatened them not to tell anyone about what they had seen. I doubt very much that the real Bommeleeër will ever be found.

The whole thing had pretty much died down during the 1990's and early 2000's until RTL showed a documentary in 2005 which brought up new witness statements, among them the one of Beffort. After that, the public started to ask questions and that police and prosecution pretty much had to find someone who was behind the bombings. During the trial, every lead there ever was is now coming up again. There have been about 140 days of court hearings thus far and there is no end in sight. Even if it was what seemed like a ridiculous case, I am happy that the police investigated into the claims of someone saying to have seen Prince Jean at the airport and did not let it fall under the table because he was the brother of the Grand Duke. I hope that his name has been cleared once and for all now and that maybe, just maybe whoever did it will be found. The Luxembourgish police has actually started investigations into a possible involvement into three other persons in the case.
 
The problem is that the shadow of suspicion will now always hang over the princes, and by association the entire GD Family even if/when Jean and Guillaume are cleared.

So the damage from this farce has been done, and it is permanent imo.:sad:
 
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