The court finds Muhammad Ashraf Asif Jalali guilty of attempting to incite murder on Wilders with an explicit terrorist motive. He is sentenced to 14 years in prison. The second defendant, Saad Rizvi, is sentenced to four years in prison for threats and incitement to murder, two years less than the prosecutor requested. His sentence is lower than Jalali's, as his social media posts are not considered to fall within the scope of terrorist crimes.
The two men are in Pakistan, and according to Dutch authorities, there is a low probability that Pakistan will extradite them. The prosecutor in the case says that requests to Pakistani authorities for assistance have not been heeded.
This is not the first time Pakistani men have been convicted of threats against Geert Wilders. Last year, the former Pakistani cricketer Khalid Latif was sentenced to 12 years in prison for offering a reward to anyone who murdered Wilders. And in 2019, another Pakistani man was arrested and convicted of planning a terrorist attack with Wilders as the target.
Geert Wilders is the leader of the anti-immigrant Freedom Party (PVV). The party received the most votes in the Dutch election in May, but to gain a majority behind a government, he was forced to agree to stay outside the government during the negotiations.
