September 2nd, 2024

Geert Wilders' speech at the trial of Pakistani imam JALALI

Mr President, honorable members of the Court, Mr Public Prosecutor, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak here today.

This is a special and unique trial that I have been looking forward to for a long time. Because the consequences of what people like mufti Jalali have done are enormous for me, as a member of the House of Representatives, but also as an ordinary citizen and for my family, including my wife.

I cannot remember a previous mufti, in this case from Pakistan, being tried in the Netherlands for issuing a fatwa on a Dutch politician. I would like to thank the Public Prosecution Service and you as judges, for whom this can all have unpleasant consequences, that this trial is taking place.

And even though the suspect is not present, I hope that you will send a signal to him and the world that issuing fatwas to kill someone without being punished is not accepted here.

As your court knows, a mufti is a senior legal scholar in Islamic law with the authority to make judgments in the form of fatwas that are binding on the followers of the mufti. And Mr. Jalali is not only a mufti but also the leader of the Pakistani political party Tehreek Labaik Islam (TLI for short).

Former Prime Minister Rutte has previously said in response to parliamentary questions that he finds this fatwa to be dangerous, reprehensible and undermining our democracy, and that is to his credit. This government also wrote in a letter to the House of Representatives this morning that it is unacceptable that people who threaten political office holders go free. And bearing in mind our separation of powers, it is of course solely up to you as the judiciary to pass judgment on it in a criminal law sense.

Allow me to briefly outline the context of these threats. In May 2015, I was present in Garland, Texas, where I was invited to give a speech and award the first prize to the winner of a Muhammad cartoon contest. I accepted that invitation because I found, and still find, it unacceptable that freedom of expression in Western countries must give way to religious rules that are not law there.

During that meeting - I had just left with my security guards immediately after my speech - two terrorists with semi-automatic weapons who wanted to carry out an attack were spotted in the parking lot of the conference center where the cartoon competition was held.

They were both shot dead by the American police before they could take action, but unfortunately a guard was injured.

It was a shocking experience and also the reason - the unacceptability of terror and violence in response to making a drawing, a cartoon - that I decided to organize such a competition myself again to show that we do not bow down to violence or its threat.

That competition would be held a few years later in 2018. Ultimately I canceled it because Dutch people abroad and Pakistan in particular were experiencing major security problems.

It was at that time and in the years that followed that death threats came from all sides and several fatwas were pronounced on me. I will discuss this now in the case against Mr Jalali, and in the other case this afternoon.

I will not repeat everything the Public Prosecutor said. But the core of mufti Jalali's fatwa is that he - and please forgive me if I do not use the correct legal term - called for me to be murdered, hanged, beheaded, and he subsequently gave that fatwa in a speech to a room full of people, posted online and said that the fatwa is irrevocable. In his words: “Our fatwa is final.” So it still applies and is forever.

He has repeated several times that I must be killed. He said and I quote: “Kill the damned Geert Wilders. Our irrevocable verdict on the cursed Geert Wilders is in the form of a fatwa.” Please realize that Pakistan has a population of 230 million, the political party of which Jalali is the leader, Tehreek Labaik Islam, has tens of millions of followers and his speeches can be followed worldwide via social media.

Mr. President, members of the Court, in a few weeks, in October to be precise, I will have lost my freedom for exactly 20 years because people want to kill me for what I say, write and do. 20 years is a very long time, you know, I'm 60 now and I've been unfree since I was 40.

In 2004, I was taken from my home in Venlo by police officers with machine guns and I have never been back home since.

During those years, my wife and I lived in safe houses, prisons, army barracks and police stations just to be safe. I have worn stick-on mustaches and wigs to be unrecognizable. And when we went to celebrate Christmas with my in-laws in Hungary, we flew with security guards in an otherwise empty Royal Air Force cargo plane.

I am sincerely very grateful to the government and the police officers of the Royal and Diplomatic Protection Service for all the security they have given me during those twenty years, risking their own lives every day.

Without them, I would be probably not be here anymore. I wouldn't have lived anymore. I am on the hit lists of Al Qaeda, ISIS, the Pakistani Taliban and have had several fatwas issued against me in the last six years, one of which we are discussing today. The only fatwa that ever reached the courtroom.

I have been working as a member of the House of Representatives for twenty years, I am the nestor of the House, so I have been there for a long time, because of threats and inflammatory fatwas such as those of Mufti Jalali, I can only do so with major limitations.
Going on a campaign for example, is difficult, because you always have several security rings around you and security understandably wants you to keep moving and spend as little time as possible with people. While that is exactly what you want to do on the campaign trail as a politician who does not often go outside to spend time among people.

As you know, there are now many fellow politicians, but also others from the public administration, journalists and opinion makers, not to mention people like you working in the judiciary, who unfortunately also have to deal with this. It's too awful for words. I sympathize with all those people and their families.

Mr President, members of the Court, because of all those threats and fatwas I have not only been limited in my functioning as a Member of Parliament, but I have also lost my freedom in my private life for twenty years.

There are always security guards, again they are my heroes, who prepare everything and have to know in time what you are going to do today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, the day after the day after tomorrow, every day and week after that and what time and where and with whom, I have therein zero privacy.

I do not have my own house, but I live in a safe house provided by the State. I have not been able to empty my own mailbox for twenty years, I have not been able to drive a car in this beautiful country, I have never spontaneously done anything or gone anywhere.

Not going for a walk with my wife if I feel like it in the evening, if I have not indicated it at least a day in advance, but preferably earlier, and even then the question still remains whether it is possible.

I'm also not allowed to go outside near the safe house where I live. So I don't know the street where I live, I mean I have never walked around or anything like that.

I drive in tinted cars from the parking garage of my safe house to the parking garage of the House of Representatives. From my office in parliament I cannot look outside to see what the weather is like because the windows are tinted as well. I sometimes work in the House of Representatives for a week from early in the morning until late at night and have no idea what the weather has been like outside that week.

And when you celebrate your wedding anniversary with your wife, or grieve at your mother's funeral, or have to go to the doctor or hospital for something unpleasant, or - something fun - go on vacation, you are never, ever alone, and everything is planned, planned and planned again and all relevant government services see your agenda and activities.

And every day you get up and leave for work in armored cars, often with sirens. And somewhere in the back of your mind you are always aware that it could be your last day. You are always vigilant and alert. It consumes energy. You try to put it into perspective because you have to move on, but of course you don't always succeed because you are only a human being. Sometimes it drives you crazy.

Because it is real. A Pakistani man has been sentenced to ten years in prison here in the Netherlands because he wanted to commit a terrorist attack on me in 2018. In the same year, an attack was committed on the Central Station in Amsterdam because of the cartoon competition, in which two American tourists were stabbed.

Previously, people from other parts of the world who wanted to harm me have been stopped by foreign authorities on their way here. And who knows how many others who also wanted to do that and still want to do it have not done it or are doing it because fortunately I am protected.

Mr President, members of the Court, the worst of all are the fatwas. To start with, because they will always apply. Look at Salman Rushdie.

As you know, Salman Rushdie already had a fatwa issued on him by Imam Khomeini in 1989, but 33 years later in 2022 he was attacked by a man with a knife and seriously injured during a lecture in New York state.

Fatwas never disappear.

And that's why they're the worst.

And they also have an enormous attraction on other people to follow the fatwa that comes from a cleric.

Over the past twenty years I have filed thousands of complaints against people all over the world who say they want to kill me. Texts, pictures, beheading and execution films, letters, packages, you can name it all. It never ends.

I reported death threats almost a thousand times in 2022 and then scaled back. Not because they no longer appear, because they still come every day, but because there are so many of them that otherwise I would no longer have time to do my work.

Many of these threats are the result of fatwas and incendiary calls such as from Mufti Jalali. Because of his statements, mostly but certainly not exclusively from Pakistan.

Usually, the Public Prosecutor's Office does not do much with it. For a long time, once a week, I signed a collective complaint with 50 to 100 death threats at once, and either I never heard anything about it again, or I received a message a long time later that they were all imposed, as it is called.

Soon I found out that imposed means that they disappear into a closet and nothing happens anymore.

But now, fortunately, something does happen.

Fortunately, against the big fish, the instigators of many threats, something is being done.

Therefore, today is an important day for me.

Because two men who issued fatwas and death threats against me are on trial today. One this morning and one this afternoon.

Mr Jalali is partly responsible for the fact that I have lost my freedom and have to live like a semi-prisoner in order to survive. He is not here today, but I am glad he is on trial.

That he and the rest of the world see that you cannot just use unlawful means against someone. That you are not allowed to call for, or incite to kill someone.

That if you disagree with someone - and of course that is allowed - you should use only democratic and nonviolent means to express your displeasure and anger. But that violence or incitement to do so is never allowed. And that you cannot get away with it.

I hope that your court will also send that signal in your verdict. That no one, mullahs included, in a rule-of-law state can get away with issuing a fatwa to kill someone. That they cannot get away with inciting or calling for someone to be killed.

That is why today is such an important day for me.

I will never get back those twenty years of lost freedom. I will probably never get my freedom back at all.

Because of people like mullah Jalali.

Please do not let him get away with this.

Hold him accountable for his actions, for his misdeeds.

I wish you much wisdom.

Thank you very much for your attention.