AMSTERDAM: A court Wednesday ordered the race hate trial of Dutch anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders to go ahead despite claims it had no jurisdiction in the case. The trial opened in October last year, but was abruptly halted three weeks later when the judges trying Wilders were ordered to step down by a panel of their peers who upheld the politician's claims of bias. But the Amsterdam district court Wednesday dismissed the MP's objections that the court and prosecutors were not competent to try him because the alleged offenses were not committed in Amsterdam. “The trial will continue,” chief judge Marcel van Oosten told the court. He said the next hearing would take place on April 13 with testimony from three defense witnesses and the case was expected to run until the end of June. The prosecution case focuses on the short film “Fitna”, which catapulted Wilders to international notoriety in 2008 and in which he mixes Qur'anic verses with footage of extremist attacks. In the film he likened the Holy Book to Hitler's “Mein Kampf”. Wilders' lawyers claimed that the film was distributed via an American server and was not released in Amsterdam. “The film is, when you take into account its contents and sub-titles in the Dutch language, destined for a Dutch audience,” he told the court. The MP, whose Party for Freedom gives parliamentary support to a right-leaning coalition, faces up to a year in jail or a $10,300 fine for comments made in his campaign to “stop the Islamization of the Netherlands”. Prosecutors initially dismissed dozens of complaints against Wilders in June 2008 but were compelled by the appeals ruling to mount a case against him in 2010. – Agence France
