BADHOEVEDORP: A Dutch court on Monday convicted Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) chief Saad Hussain Rizvi and breakaway faction Tehreek-i-Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah’s chief Dr Muhammad Ashraf Jalali on charges of inciting their followers to murder far-right and anti-Islam leader Geert Wilders.

The two men were tried in absentia as Pakistan did not force the men to appear at the high-security trial as requested by the Netherlands.

Jalali was handed a 14-year sentence for calling on his followers to hang or behead Wilders.

In an April 2022 video on Jalali’s YouTube channel, he could be heard saying that Wilders should be “handed over to Pakistan” and hanged publicly here.

Rizvi, the TLP leader, was sentenced to four years for urging his followers to kill Wilders after Pakistani cricketer Khalid Latif was sentenced for incitement to murder him.

Wilders sought to arrange a sacrilegious caricature competition in 2018 but later cancelled it after protests broke out in Pakistan, and he was inundated with death threats.

The call to kill Wilders appeared to resonate, as 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 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. Wilders’ PVV (Freedom Party) was the big winner of Dutch parliamentary elections in November.

Published in Dawn, September 10th, 2024