Post by pieter on Aug 29, 2023 12:22:06 GMT -7
Disgraced cricketer on trial for offering reward to kill Wilders
August 29, 2023
Geert Wilders surrounded by bodyguards. Photo: Depositphotos.com
The public prosecutor is demanding a prison sentence of 12 years for a former Pakistan cricketer who is on trial in the Netherlands accused of offering a €21,000 reward for the murder of far-right Dutch political leader Geert Wilders.
Khalid Latif posted a video on YouTube promising 3 million Pakistan rupees to anyone who murdered Wilders and filmed the killing.
Prosecutors asked judges at the high-security court at Schiphol to sentence Latif to 12 years in jail, arguing that an attack on Wilders would have “undermined Dutch democracy”. However, any sentence will be of largely symbolic value as there are no extradition arrangements between Pakistan and the Netherlands.
Latif called for Muslims to take revenge on Wilders after the PVV party leader proposed an international contest for cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in August 2018.
Thousands of people protested in the streets of Islamabad, some of whom burned Dutch flags and photographs of Wilders, while the Pakistani ambassador in The Hague called for the United Nations to intervene.
It is the first time the Dutch prosecution service has brought charges against someone in another country for threatening a politician. In 2021 a Pakistani man living in the Netherlands, Junaid I., was given a 10-year jail sentence for plotting an attack on the PVV leader.
Wilders, 59, is one of the most heavily guarded politicians in the Netherlands. He has received round-the-clock protection since he posted a short film, Fitna, which featured Danish cartoons of the prophet, quotations from the Quran and footage of terrorist attacks in Europe, on the internet in 2008.
He told NOS he would exercise his right to make a victim’s impact statement to the court. He said: “I think the judges should know what this means for me and so many other people who have been threatened, what it does to my life and how it has robbed me of my freedom for 20 years.”
Latif, 37, played one-day and T20 cricket for Pakistan, but in 2017 he was banned from the sport for five years for his involvement in a spot-fixing scandal in the Pakistan Super League. He was also fined 1 million rupees for breaching the anti-corruption code.
Geert Wilders speech for the Dutch court
