A security scare over the safety of outspoken far-right Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders emerged on Wednesday just three weeks before a knife-edge election, after a police agent was arrested for leaking information about him to a Moroccan gang.
Wilders, who has courted controversy with his hardline anti-Islam, anti-immigrant stance, as well as his incendiary insults against Moroccans and Turks, has long been under 24-hour police protection, but tensions are escalating ahead of the March 15 election in which the lawmaker’s Freedom Party is running neck-and-neck with the Liberals of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
On Saturday, Wilders upped the tone at the launch of his official campaign, denouncing “a lot of Moroccan scum who make the streets unsafe.”
Wilders on Wednesday would not divulge details about the security issue, but said on Twitter: “It’s a serious matter and fortunately it’s being taken seriously by the Cabinet, too.”
Police spokesman Dennis Janus confirmed that an agent had been arrested on Monday suspected of “violating official secrets.”
“The police together with the public prosecution service are currently investigating,” Janus said, but declined to give further information.
Citing high-level police sources, the NRC daily reported that an agent had handed over information about Wilders’ movements to a Moroccan-Dutch criminal organization.
The leak was serious enough to trigger talks between Wilders and his political foe, Rutte, who also refused to comment.
The unnamed agent is part of the so-called “Iris team,” a police squad which carries out preliminary sweeps of public spaces before appearances by politicians such as Wilders or the Dutch royal family, De Telegraaf reported.
It was not immediately clear whether the agent was directly involved in Wilders’ personal protection, but Wilders, who was last year convicted by a Dutch court of discrimination, said in a tweet: “If I cannot blindly trust the [team] that has to protect me I can’t function. It’s unacceptable!”
Dutch Police Chief Erik Akkerboom told news radio station BNR: “What we know up to now is that [Wilders’] safety was not in question.”
“This man did not belong to the so-called ‘inner circle,’ but he did have important information and we don’t want to take any risks,” Akkerboom said.
However, he did confirm media reports that the agent was of Moroccan background.
Dutch lawmakers, who also use the police protection unit, reacted with shock.
“All politicians should be entitled to a ‘ring of safety,’” Christian Union parliamentary leader Gert-Jan Segers said. “Politicians need freedom and safety.”
The Netherlands is no stranger to political violence, even though the nation of just 17 million people has largely gained a reputation for tolerance.
Flamboyant far-right leader Pim Fortuyn was assassinated just nine days before Dutch elections in 2002. Just two years later in November 2004, filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered by a Muslim radical.
Wilders, 53, has vowed in his party’s one-page manifesto that if elected he would ban the sale of Korans, close mosques and Islamic schools, shut Dutch borders and ban Muslim immigrants.
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