The Dutch prosecutors have sought a 14-year jail term for Muhammad Ashraf Asif Jalali, a Pakistani Muslim cleric charged with provoking the assassination of Geert Wilders, a right-wing anti-Islam MP, leader of the party which was voted into power in the last Dutch general elections.
Jalali absented himself from a trial that was conducted in a high-security court near Amsterdam and was charged with using his religious position to incite his congregation to kill Wilders through hanging or beheading. The absence of the defendant is because there is no extradition treaty signed between Pakistan and the Netherlands.
While in the dock Wilders also gave his testimony and summarized the threats’ effects on his life, as he has had to take various security precautions since 2004. “Every morning you get out of bed, move to work in armed vehicles with loudspeakers warning everyone that today could be your last day on earth,” Wilders said. “I am 60 now and I have not experienced freedom of candidature since the time when I was 40 years old”.
The unnamed prosecutor told the judges that threats against Wilders intensified on social media after the MP published cartoons in 2018 that contested the ‘Bruno Muhammad’ sketch, announcing that a competition for a better Charlie Hebdo-like figure would be held. The competition which led to a protest in many parts of Pakistan and other Muslim-dominated countries including Iran, Indonesia,, and Egypt over ……was recently withdrawn by Wilders but the outcome of this competition remains as the following backlash which is still on.
This trial is one of a series of legal proceedings against people who threatened Wilders; the Dutchman has been under police protection for about twenty years now as a result of his activities aimed against Islam. In the past year, ex-Pakistani cricket chief Khalid Latif received twelve years for a plot to emasculate Wilders and offer a bounty for his death. Just like Jalali, Latif missed his trial, which was scheduled to be held by the court.
In another case in 2019, another Pakistani man was arrested in the Netherlands, convicted,, and given 10 years imprisonment for planning to carry out a terrorist attack on Wilders whom many describe as the Dutch Donald Trump.
Although Wilders made certain comments which triggered some legal cases in the Netherlands including an appeals court ruling in 2020 that upheld his conviction for inciting hatred against Moroccans during a campaign speech in 2014, no penalty was given. The judge in that case also recognized the severe personal costs that Mr. Wilders incurs to this day because of the protection he is under for hate speech.
