A Dutch court on Monday convicted two Pakistani men on charges of incitement for urging their followers to murder far-right and anti-Islam leader Geert Wilders.
The two men, Muhammed Ashraf Jalali and Saad Hussain Rizvi, were tried in absentia as Pakistan did not force the men to appear at the high-security trial as requested by the Netherlands.
Jalali, a 56-year-old religious leader, was handed a 14-year sentence for calling on his followers to kill Wilders and promising they would be “rewarded in the afterlife.”
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Rizvi, 29, leader of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) party, was sentenced to four years after urging followers to kill Wilders after Pakistani cricketer Khalid Latif was sentenced for incitement to murder him.
In September 2023, judges sentenced Latif to 12 years behind bars for incitement to murder Wilders after the firebrand lawmaker sought to arrange a competition for cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
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.
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 cartoon 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.