Skip to main content

2 Pak Nationals Charged Over Calls For Dutch Far-Right Leader's Murder

Dutch prosecutors said Wednesday they were putting two Pakistani nationals on trial for incitement to murder anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders, asking Islamabad for legal help in the matter.

Judges in September last year sentenced Pakistani cricketer Khalid Latif to 12 years behind bars for urging people to murder Wilders after the firebrand lawmaker sought to arrange a competition for cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

The Public Prosecution Service said it was prosecuting two Pakistani nationals, one a religious leader, 55 and one a political leader, 29, "who have called upon their following to murder a Dutch member of Parliament."

"This was done both during meetings and on social media through video and text messages," it said in a statement.

The religious leader allegedly called for Wilders' murder as his followers would be "rewarded in the afterlife", while the political leader said since Latif's conviction it was "up to his own followers to carry out the task".

The two men are set to go on trial at a highly-secure courthouse near Amsterdam's Schiphol airport on September 2.

Dutch authorities have asked Islamabad for legal assistance to question the suspects and serve summonses to appear in court.

However, no treaty exists with Pakistan for mutual legal assistance and it seems unlikely the two men will ever appear in the dock.

Geert Wilders posted two names on X, formerly Twitter, but prosecutors did not give the suspects' names because of privacy reasons.

The names could not independently be verified by AFP.

"I hope they will be extradited, convicted and jailed!" Wilders said.    

Dutch authorities have sought in vain to question Latif over the case and requested legal assistance from Pakistan, also to no avail.

Wilders cancelled the cartoon contest after protests broke out in Pakistan and he was inundated with death threats. He has been under 24-hour state protection since 2004.

In the Netherlands, the plan to stage the contest was criticised widely with politicians, local media and ordinary citizens slamming the idea as needlessly antagonising Muslims.

But the call to kill Wilders appeared to resonate, with a Pakistani man sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2019 for plotting his assassination in the wake of the cancelled contest.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)



from NDTV News-World-news https://ift.tt/NaWEfpy

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's Official, Kamala Harris Is Democratic Candidate For US Election

US Vice President Kamala Harris effectively secured the Democratic party's presidential nomination Friday, confirming her remarkable rise to party standard bearer in November's showdown against Republican Donald Trump. Kamala Harris was the sole candidate on the ballot for a five-day electronic vote of nearly 4,000 party convention delegates. She will be officially crowned at a Chicago convention later this month. "I am honored to be the presumptive Democratic nominee for President of the United States," Kamala Harris, 59, said on a phone-in to a party celebration after securing enough votes by the second day of the marathon vote. In the two weeks since President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid, Kamala Harris has gained full control of the party. No other Democrats stepped forward to challenge her elevation to the top of the ticket, making her confirmation as the first Black and South Asian woman ever to secure a major party's nomination a formality. The a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Muhammad Now The Most Popular Name For A Baby In Great Britain, Data Shows

427 years after William Shakespeare wrote it for the first time in the great "tragedy" Romeo & Juliet, England is asking the quintessential question - "What's in a name?" - And this time wondering what significance that question might hold in another 42.7 years. The Department of Statistics in the United Kingdom has revealed in its latest dataset that Muhammad is officially the most popular name for a newborn boy in England and Wales. More than 4,600 babies were registered with that name in 2023 - the highest for a boy. Muhammad was the second-most popular name in 2022 as well. Noah, once the most popular name in UK, came a distant second this year, according to the Office for National Statistics or ONS. But the staff at Great Britain's statistical office has in-fact been observing the trend for a while now. Jotting down the most popular names in the UK, besides other important statistics, it revealed that Muhammad has been among the top 10 names for...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pak's ISI Fuelling Unrest In Bangladesh, Claims Sheikh Hasina's Son

Sheikh Hasina, who quit as prime minister and fled Bangladesh, will be back in the country as soon as democracy is restored, his son Sajeeb Wazed Joy said on Thursday and blamed Pakistan's intelligence agency, ISI, for fuelling the ongoing unrest in the country. In an interview with PTI, Mr Joy said that although 76-year-old Sheikh Hasina would return to Bangladesh, it has not yet been decided whether she will be back as a "retired or active" politician. He also asserted that the members of the Sheikh Mujib (Sheikh Mujibur Rahman) family will neither abandon its people nor leave the beleaguered Awami League in the lurch. He expressed gratitude to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government for protecting his mother and appealed to India to help build international opinion and exert pressure to restore democracy in Bangladesh. "Yes, it is true that I had said she wouldn't return to Bangladesh. But a lot has changed in the last two days following continuous...
Post a Comment
Read more