Friday, February 4, 2011

Yeates murder: Tabak’s supporters rally round

Murder suspect fails to put in bail application, but fighting fund is launched in Netherlands

LAST UPDATED 12:28 PM, JANUARY 25, 2011

Vincent Tabak, the Dutchman charged with the muurder of Jo Yeates, has been remanded in custody after appearing in court for a second time in two days. He was expected to ask for bail at Bristol Crown Court this morning, but his defence team declined to make the application. He has yet to enter a plea to the charge, and is due back in court next Monday.

In addition to gripping the British media, the case has made headlines in Tabak’s homeland where supporters are rallying to his defence.

A fighting fund has been established to raise money for legal bills and travel expenses incurred by his family. It has been set up by former students and professors at the Technical University of Eindhoven, where Tabak studied studied architectural engineering before moving to England in 2007.

The 32-year-old suspect lived next door to Yeates in Bristol and worked as a "people flow analyst" at a Bath engineering consultancy Buro Happold.

Paul Vermeij, a spokesman for Tabak's supporters, said that those behind the fighting fund "believe in the innocence of their former classmate" while his family are "convinced" he will be cleared.

Vermeij said that he had been asked by Tabak's family to deal with the media and described the interest in the case as "an additional burden on the family, besides the fact that they should deal with the emotion that a relative is suspected of murder".

He said that the accused man had been behaving completely normally over Christmas. Tabak spent Christmas Day with his girlfriend Tanja Morson and her family in Cambridge before heading back to the Netherlands for New Year with his family. "They just had a good time together as a family – totally normal, nothing strange," said Vermeij.