Two Pakistanis convicted of inciting murder of Dutch far-right leader

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ADDS Details of the verdict, Wilders reaction

A Dutch court on Monday found two Pakistani men guilty of inciting their supporters to murder right-wing extremist and Islamophobic leader Geert Wilders.

The trial of the two men, Muhammed Ashraf Jalali and Saad Hussain Rizvi, took place in absentia because Pakistan did not compel the men to appear at the high-security trial as requested by the Netherlands.

Wilders, whose PVV (Freedom Party) won the Dutch parliamentary elections in November by a clear margin, has been under 24-hour state protection since 2004 after being threatened because of his comments on Islam.

The court sentenced 56-year-old religious leader Jalali to 14 years in prison for giving a speech calling on his followers to kill Wilders and promising them they would be “rewarded in the afterlife.”

In their ruling, the judges stated that Jalali had “abused his authority as a religious leader” and that his followers probably took the call seriously.

They concluded that Jalali's call had a terrorist motive and was directed not only against Wilders but against Dutch politics in general.

Rizvi, 29, chairman of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) party, was sentenced to four years in prison for calling on his supporters to kill Wilders.

Rizvi was found guilty of glorifying previous statements made by Pakistani cricketer Khalid Latif.

In September 2023, judges sentenced Latif to 12 years in prison for inciting Wilders' murder after the hot-headed MP tried to organize a competition for caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

Wilders cancelled the cartoon competition after protests broke out in Pakistan and he received death threats.

A Pakistani man was sentenced to ten years in prison in 2019 for planning his murder during the canceled competition.

In the Netherlands, the plan for a cartoon competition was widely criticized for unnecessarily provoking Muslims.

“This case has had a huge impact on me and my family,” Wilders said in court last week.

Since there is no judicial agreement between the Netherlands and Pakistan, it is considered unlikely that Jalali and Rizvi will serve their sentences.

Responding to the verdict, Wilders said in a message on X: “These two criminals must be arrested and imprisoned immediately.”

He said that making and displaying caricatures of the Prophet was a matter of “freedom of expression.”

He told reporters separately that the ruling was “a very good decision.”

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