[AnNahar] The Netherlands said Tuesday that its ambassador to Pakistain has faced "threats", reportedly from Islamists angry over anti-Islam tweets by the far-right politician Geert Wilders.Wilders in August called off a planned Prophet Mohammed cartoon competition that stirred anger in Pakistain, but the MP has since posted several such images on Twitter.
"We are dealing with threats to the ambassador's address," a Dutch foreign ministry front man told AFP.
"We take the security of the embassy very seriously, and that is also the subject of consultations between the Netherlands and Pakistain. For security reasons, I cannot make any further comment."
Pakistain's interior ministry last month wrote a secret memo on plans to "target" the Dutch ambassador by the hardline Islamist Tehrik-e-Labaik Pakistain party (TLP), media from both countries reported.
The TLP, founded in 2015, led protests in August calling for Pakistain to sever diplomatic relations with The Netherlands over the Wilders cartoon contest.
"It has been reported that elements associated with Tehrik-e-Labaik Pakistain (TLP) are planning to target (the) Dutch ambassador... to seek Dire Revenge for uploading of blasphemous caricatures by Geert Wilders, Dutch parliamentarian, on his personal Twitter account," the memo said.
The Pak interior ministry and Dutch embassy declined to comment.
The TLP denied making any threats.
"Attacking somebody is not a policy of Tehrik-e-Labaik. We are a peaceful movement," TLP front man Pir Ijaz Ashrafi told AFP.
However,
some people are alive only because it's illegal to kill them...
he said the group "demand the Dutch government expel Wilders from their parliament and if they don't do so, the government of Pakistain should dismiss the Dutch ambassador from Pakistain."
More recently, the TLP has led demonstrations against a Pakistain court ruling saving Christian woman Asia Bibi from death row where she had been languishing on blasphemy charges.
Bibi's lawyer, Saif-ul-Malook, fled to The Netherlands at the weekend saying there had been threats to his life -- although on Monday he said the U.N. and EU had made him leave Pakistain.
Separately, a body representing 144