The Hague: Dutch prosecutors have announced that two Pakistani nationals will stand trial for inciting the murder of anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders. They have requested legal assistance from Islamabad regarding the matter. Last September, judges sentenced Pakistani cricketer Khalid Latif to 12 years in prison for urging individuals to kill Wilders.
This came after Wilders organised a competition for cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed. The Public Prosecution Service is pursuing charges against two Pakistani nationals, aged 55 and 29, identified as a religious leader and a political leader respectively, for encouraging their followers to assassinate 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 trial of the two men is scheduled to take place at a heavily fortified courthouse near Amsterdam's Schiphol airport on September 2nd. Dutch officials have reached out to Islamabad for legal aid in interrogating the suspects and delivering court summonses. However, as there is no existing treaty between the Netherlands and Pakistan for mutual legal cooperation, the likelihood of the two men appearing in court remains slim.
Geert Wilders posted two names on X, formerly Twitter, but prosecutors did not give the suspects' names because of privacy reasons.