January the 16th, 2022 - A Croatian lawyer has been ordered to pay 10,000 kuna for refusing to disinfect his hands as the coronavirus pandemic continues and hand washing is part of the most basic of epidemiological measures. He also referred to the disinfectant on offer to him as ''poison''.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, before the start of a main hearing in court recently, the judge told those present to put their things away and spray their hands with the available disinfectant, but the prosecutor's Croatian lawyer said he did not want to do so, according to a report from Nacional.

The bizarre situation has also been also described in the official minutes of the court:

“Next, the trial judge instructs the same lawyer (the prosecutor's lawyer, op.a.) to use his hand sanitiser, to which the same lawyer replies that there is no other - his disinfectant, without spraying his hands with the disinfectant offered to him by the judge, before saying "we aren't going to shake hands and I don't want to use the poison offered to me" before requesting that the latter be entered in the minutes,;; it is written in the minutes.

The judge is the person who determines during the hearing what will be entered in the minutes. As such, he warned the Croatian lawyer who refused to disinfect his hands and stated that he "will not disinfect his hands because that disinfectant is poison", that he was behaving inappropriately in court and disobeying a court order before sending him out of court.

The lawyer refused to leave the courtroom, to which the judge ordered his associates to call a security guard who "within five minutes", as it is written in the minutes, removed the disobedient and oddly behaving lawyer from the courtroom.

According to the decision of the minutes, the Croatian lawyer in question was fined 10,000 kuna for his inappropriate behaviour for "disrespect, inappropriate treatment and disobedience to court orders, with personal audacity." The incident will also be reported to the Bar Association.

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