NETHERLANDS: A Dutch court on Monday convicted two Pakistani men of inciting their followers to murder far-right and anti-Islam leader Geert Wilders.
The two men, Muhammed Ashraf Jalali and Saad Hussain Rizvi, were tried in absentia as Pakistan did not force the men to appear at the high-security trial as requested by the Netherlands.
Wilders, whose PVV (Freedom Party) was the big winner of Dutch parliamentary elections in November, has been under 24-hour state protection since 2004, having received threats following his comments about Islam.
The court handed Jalali, a 56-year-old religious leader, a 14-year sentence for calling on his followers in a speech to kill Wilders and promising they would be “rewarded in the afterlife.”
The judges said in their ruling that Jalali “abused his authority” as a religious leader and that it was likely his followers would have taken the call seriously.
They judged that Jalali’s call had a terrorist motive and had targeted not just Wilders but the Dutch political world in general.
Rizvi, 29, leader of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) party, was sentenced to four years for urging followers to kill Wilders.
Rizvi was convicted of glorifying earlier comments by Pakistani cricketer Khalid Latif.
In September 2023, judges sentenced Latif for incitement to 12 years behind bars for incitement to murder Wilders after the firebrand lawmaker sought to arrange a competition for cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
Wilders cancelled the cartoon contest after protests broke out in Pakistan and he was inundated with death threats.
A Pakistani man was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2019 for plotting his assassination in the wake of the cancelled contest.
In the Netherlands, the plan for the cartoon contest was widely criticised as needlessly antagonising Muslims.
“This case has had a huge impact on me and my family,“ Wilders told the court last week.
There is no judicial agreement between the Netherlands and Pakistan so it is thought unlikely that the Jalali and Rizvi will serve their sentences.
Reacting to the ruling, Wilders said in a a message on X: “These two criminals must be arrested immediately and imprisoned.”
He said making and showing cartoons of the prophet was a question of “freedom of expression”.
He separately told reporters the ruling was “a very good decision”.
