THE HAGUE, Netherlands: A Dutch appeals court upheld Friday the conviction of anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders for insulting Moroccans in comments he made at an election night gathering in 2014. However, the court overturned Wilders’ conviction for inciting discrimination.
The appeals court did not punish Wilders for his conviction, which he can appeal to the Dutch Supreme Court.
The comments for which Wilders was convicted “can contribute to polarization within Dutch society, while in our democratic, pluralistic society respect for others, especially minority groups, is of great importance,” said Presiding Judge Jan Maarten Reinking.
Wilders, whose political career has been based largely on his strident anti-Islam rhetoric, was convicted in December 2016 of insulting and inciting discrimination against Moroccans in 2014. He was not given a punishment.
Wilders made no immediate comment in court Friday.
The Party for Freedom leader has always insisted he is innocent and branded his prosecution a politically-motivated attempt to muzzle him and an attack on the freedom of speech. The appeals court rejected his claims of political interference in the case and said that free speech also has limits.
Friday’s conviction was based on comments Wilders made on the night of Dutch municipal elections in 2014 at a meeting in a Hague cafe. In what appeals judges said was a carefully prepared exchange, Wilders asked supporters whether they wanted more or fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands. That sparked a chant of “Fewer! Fewer! Fewer!” — to which he replied, “we’ll take care of it.”
The ruling Friday comes some six months before national parliamentary elections in the Netherlands. According to a poll of polls, Wilders’ party is the largest opposition party.
Dutch appeals court convicts anti-Islam lawmaker Wilders of insulting Moroccans
https://arab.news/cbq85
Dutch appeals court convicts anti-Islam lawmaker Wilders of insulting Moroccans
- Wilders, whose political career has been based largely on his strident anti-Islam rhetoric, was convicted in December 2016 of insulting and inciting discrimination against Moroccans in 2014
- The appeals court did not punish Wilders for his conviction, which he can appeal to the Dutch Supreme Court
French court slashes jails term for trio over 2020 teacher beheading
- Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years
PARIS, France: A French court on Monday reduced on appeal the jail sentences of three men convicted over the 2020 terrorist beheading of a teacher who showed a class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Samuel Paty, 47, was murdered in October 2020 by an 18-year-old radical Islamist of Chechen origin in an act that horrified France.
His attacker, Abdoullakh Anzorov, was killed in a shootout with police.
Two friends of Anzorov, French national Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, a Russian of Chechen origin, had their sentences of 16 years in prison reduced to six and seven years respectively by a Paris court of appeal.
Both were accused of having driven Anzorov and helping him to procure weapons before the beheading.
Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years.
His daughter, then aged 13, was not actually in the classroom at the time and during the first trial apologized to the teacher’s family.
The court however left the 15-year term for French-Moroccan Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui untouched.
The quartet were among the seven men and one woman found guilty in 2024 of contributing to the climate of hatred that led to the beheading of the history and geography teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, west of Paris.
Paty, who has become a free-speech icon, used the cartoons as part of an ethics class to discuss freedom of expression laws in France.
