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.
A new online voting system aimed at boosting turnout among the Philippines’ millions of overseas workers ahead of Monday’s mid-term elections has been marked by confusion and fears of disenfranchisement. Thousands of overseas Filipino workers have already cast their ballots in the race dominated by a bitter feud between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and his impeached vice president, Sara Duterte. While official turnout figures are not yet publicly available, data from the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) showed that at least 134,000 of the 1.22 million registered overseas voters have signed up for the new online system, which opened on April 13. However,
ALLIES: Calling Putin his ‘old friend,’ Xi said Beijing stood alongside Russia ‘in the face of the international counter-current of unilateralism and hegemonic bullying’ Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday was in Moscow for a state visit ahead of the Kremlin’s grand Victory Day celebrations, as Ukraine accused Russia’s army of launching air strikes just hours into a supposed truce. More than 20 foreign leaders were in Russia to attend a vast military parade today marking 80 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, taking place three years into Russia’s offensive in Ukraine. Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in February 2022 and has marshaled the memory of Soviet victory against Nazi Germany to justify his campaign and rally society behind the offensive,
CONFLICTING REPORTS: Beijing said it was ‘not familiar with the matter’ when asked if Chinese jets were used in the conflict, after Pakistan’s foreign minister said they were The Pakistan Army yesterday said it shot down 25 Indian drones, a day after the worst violence between the nuclear-armed rivals in two decades. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vowed to retaliate after India launched deadly missile strikes on Wednesday morning, escalating days of gunfire along their border. At least 45 deaths were reported from both sides following Wednesday’s violence, including children. Pakistan’s military said in a statement yesterday that it had “so far shot down 25 Israeli-made Harop drones” at multiple location across the country. “Last night, India showed another act of aggression by sending drones to multiple locations,” Pakistan military spokesman Ahmed
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that he would make a decision about how the US government would refer to the body of water commonly known as the Persian Gulf when he visits Arab states next week. Trump told reporters at the White House that he expects his hosts in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates will ask him about the US officially calling the waterway the Arabian Gulf or Gulf of Arabia. “They’re going to ask me about that when I get there, and I’ll have to make a decision,” Trump said. “I don’t want to hurt anybody’s
RSS