Geert Wilders

"The hate speech trial of Dutch anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders will start afresh after judges trying him were ordered to step down Friday by a panel of their colleagues at the politician's request.

'The trial will start afresh,' Amsterdam district court spokeswoman Mercedes Grootscholten told AFP after a panel of oversight judges said Wilders' concerns of bias on the part of his trial judges were 'understandable'.

Judge GH Marcus, the president of a panel convened to consider Wilders' request for the judges' recusal, said their denial of his request to recall a witness 'appears to be in conflict with the applicable jurisprudence'.

'We find the applicant's fear that the court's decision points to a degree of bias, also in light of earlier incidents, understandable,' the judge said.

Wilders, 47, went on trial on October 4 for inciting hatred by calling Islam 'fascist' and likening the Koran to Hitler's 'Mein Kampf'.

There have been seven days of hearings so far. Judgement had been set for November 5."

A senior Afghan Taliban official has warned of an attack against the Netherlands if its new government implements the agenda of anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders, the Volkskrant daily reported Monday.

"If the Netherlands maintains or intensifies its anti-Islam policy, it is certain that the Netherlands will be the target of an attack by a jihadist group," Zabiullah Mujahed, a long-time Taliban spokesman, is quoted as having told the newspaper. 

"If he (Wilders) succeeds in manipulating the Dutch parliament to pass more anti-Islamic legislation ... there is no doubt that Muslims from other countries will take action to help their Muslim brothers and sisters," Mujahed said.

He added that the Taliban was "very careful in its relations with the Netherlands" because "it was the first country that decided to stop the occupation of our country"

Dutch prosecutors are asking judges to acquit anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders of all charges of inciting hate and discrimination against Muslims.

The move by prosecutors signals their belief the case against Wilders is weak, but judges could still disagree and convict him. The trial continues next week.

Prosecutor Paul Velleman told the court Friday that most of Wilders' remarks -- which include comparing Islam with Naziism -- appear to target Islam as an ideology, not single out Muslims for abuse.

Prosecutors initially declined to press charges, but were ordered to do so by an appeals court that ruled there was significant evidence against the influential politician. 

The Dutch anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders has gone on trial in Amsterdam accused of inciting hatred against Muslims.

Mr Wilders, whose statements have included comparing the Koran with Hitler's Mein Kampf, told the court freedom of expression was on trial.

If found guilty, he faces a maximum sentence of a year in jail.

Mr Wilders' Freedom Party is the third biggest in the Netherlands after June's elections, and is expected to play a key role in the next parliament.

Prosecutors have brought five charges of inciting hatred and discrimination, and the trial will scrutinise statements he made between 2006 and 2008.

Liberals and Christian Democrats in the Netherlands say they will ban the Muslim burqa-style veil as part of a pact to form a minority coalition government backed by the anti-Islam Freedom Party.

The pact presented by the parties' leaders Thursday also proposes to cut about $25 billion from the Dutch budget.

The incoming coalition government will be dependent on support of the Freedom Party lawmakers to give it a majority in the 150-seat chamber.

Christian Democrats are waiting the outcome of their October 2 convention vote before they make a final decision to approve the coalition proposal.

The Netherlands' new "Freedom and responsibility" coalition formally includes just the Liberal Party (VVD) and the the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA). But the 46-page-long coalition agreement by the minority government makes far-reaching concessions on burqas and immigration rules in order to be able to count on parliamentary support from Mr Wilders' PVV faction. 

Under the plans, immigrants already living in the Netherlands will face extra hurdles in bringing family members to the country and unskilled people will have even fewer chances of finding work and coming to settle. The coalition text also promises in writing to bring a burqa bill to parliament.

Speaking at a joint press conference with the VVD and CDA leaders on Thursday (30 September), Mr Wilders said "A new wind will blow in the Netherlands" and "We want the Islamisation to be stopped."

He also took a swipe at German Chancellor Angela Merkel who had earlier voiced "regret" at his potential role in The Hague. Speaking in broken German during the press conference, he said "Ms Merkel, you are not right," and told her to stop meddling in Dutch politics.

The public prosecution department announced on Tuesday it is dropping its case against a cartoonist arrested in 2008 on discrimination charges. 

The cartoonist, who operates under the pseudonym Gregorius Nekschot, published the controversial cartoons on his website. He was arrested in 2008 following a complaint made in 2005.

Although the department considers the cartoons discriminate against Muslims and 'people with dark skins', it made the decision to drop the case because the cartoons have not appeared on the website since shortly after Nekschot's arrest. In addition, the cartoonist spent 24 hours in jail following his arrest, reports the Volkskrant.

The fact that the complaint was made as far back as 2005 and there have been no further complaints also played a role, the paper says.

Western security sources have told The Daily Telegraph that attacks on football fans watching the World Cup final in Uganda had been carried out by "Al-Qaeda in East Africa," rather than the Somali group al-Shabaab which claimed responsibility.

US officials have talked recently of an increase of al-Qaeda activity in East Africa where militants have been helping train al-Shabaab fighters.

Al-Shabaab has claimed allegiance to al-Qaeda but its ability to launch attacks outside the country had been limited until the Kampala attacks in July. The group has recently been involved in heavy fighting in the Somali capital Mogadishu.

Last night Dutch security officials were continuing to question a British man of Somali origin who was arrested on a plane at Schiphol airport on his way from Liverpool to Entebbe.

Dutch prosecutors said they were investigating the man for links to a terrorist organisation but had not found any explosives.

A European diplomat in Kampala, Uganda's capital, said the man arrested in Amsterdam could have been acting as a copycat after the publicity following the Ugandan attack, which was blamed on the presence of Ugandan troops in Somalia under an African Union peace keeping mandate.

Al-Jazeera:

Dutch police have arrested a British citizen of Somali origin at Schiphol airport. The man, whose identity has not been released yet, is suspected of having links to terror groups, according to police sources.

Authorities arrested the man at the airport in Amsterdam, as he was on a lay-over from Liverpool airport in the UK to Entebbe in Uganda on Sunday morning, Evert Boerstra, the Dutch National Police spokesman, told Al Jazeera.

Dutch authorities allegedly received a tip-off on the suspect's presence by UK police.

The arrest took place on board the flight, which was jointly run by Air France, KLM and Kenya Airways.

The suspect remains in custody at Schiphol airport.

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7,000 Moroccan ulemas (Islamic scholars) rejected in a common message the Christian proselitism in their country and considered it even like a "moral rape" and "religious terrorism" that "tries to divert Moroccan children from their faith".

The collective text released this weekend is the last episode of the campaign by the authorities in Rabat against foreign Christians who settled in Morocco accusing them of proselytizing and trying to shake the faith of Muslims, a crime in the Moroccan criminal code.

Throughout the month of March about 70 Christians have been forced to flee the country, as calculated by the different churches, but the Moroccan Interior Ministry acknowledged only the expulsion of 16 who ran a small orphanage in Leuh Ain, in the Atlas Mountains .

The Christian victims of the decision of the Interior are all Protestants except a Franciscan who lived in Larache. It is the first Catholic ever expelled from northern Morocco, as the Archbishop of Tanger has said. He also denies that they had been proselytising, while attending the small community of foreign Catholics in that city.

The message of the ulemas expressed "full support and great pride" of those who subscribe to "the relevant historic decisions taken by the government to abort the hypocritical  part by a Christian group of proselitizing" in the country. Their performance with the children, the message continues, is "a moral violation, a form of religious terrorism and is equivalent to the abduction of innocent children."

"These tough decisions," the statement concluded, "reassure us about the future of the national faith protected by Divine Providence that watches and by His Majesty Mohammed VI, Commander of the Faithful, as defender of the faith (...)" . The text of the scholars of Islam was spread by its highest hierarchical body, the Supreme Ulema Council chaired by the monarch (NOTE: speaking about division of State and Religion).

The Archbishops of Rabat and Tangiers, the apostolic nuncio in Rabat and the official representative of Protestant churches in Morocco have demanded an explanation to the authorities on the wave of expulsions, but so far they have obtained none. Some Moroccan converts to Christianity have been the victims in March apparently of police harassment.

At least two governments, the U.S. and the Netherlands, have criticized the measures taken by the Moroccan authorities, but not the Spanish that is currently chairing the European Union. The bulk of the expulsions were carried, however, during the first weekend of March. At that time it was held in Granada the first summit between Morocco and the EU supported by Spain.