PVV

State Secretary Ankie Broekers-Knol of Justice and Security is struggling to talk to Morocco about taking back Moroccan nationals whose asylum application in the Netherlands had failed. She wanted to visit the country to discuss this matter, but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed her that she "would not speak to the right people", she said to parliament on Thursday, NOS reports.

Activists seek personal protection: Protest organization Kick Out Zwarte Piet has scrapped its public schedule after a violent attack on its activists in Den Haag, wrote Nu.nl, and a threat of rioting at the group's planned roundtable discussion in Hengelo. The Hengelo event set for Monday was cancelled by city politicians at the last minute, according to Tubantia.

The court has jurisdiction, the Public Prosecution Service is independent, there are ample grounds to convict PVV leader Geert Wilders of hate speech, and no reason to drop the case against him, the Advocate General said on Friday in the appeal in the hate speech trial against Wilders. The PVV leader himself was not present in the court room, Het Parool reports.

PVV Senator Marjolein Faber is under fire over a tweet in which she suggested that the media deliberately withheld the "North African" ethnicity of a man suspected of stabbing three people at a Groningen terrace last week. Days after two of the three victims refuted this claim, describing the suspect as having pale skin and gray hair, the populist politician's tweet is still online.

Since the Partial Ban on Face-Covering Clothing was implemented on August 1st, banning clothing items like burkas and balaclavas in public transport, hospitals, education- and government buildings, no violators have been fined, RTL Nieuws reports after speaking to institutions where the ban applies. A number of organizations raised concerns about increased aggression and hostility against women who wear burkas and niqabs.

The fight against organized crime is complicated, but can be won, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on the second day of the parliamentary debate on the national budget. Ferdinand Grapperhaus agreed with Rutte’s standpoint. The Security and Justice Minister from the PM’s conservative VVD party backed a call from several politicians to form a specialized unit focused solely on tackling drug crime.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte lashed out at PVV parliamentarian Raymond de Roon over a sexist remark he made during a parliamentary debate on top European appointments on Thursday. While discussing the appointment of German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen as president of the European Commission, De Roon spoke of "a ladies' circle" and Rutte could not contain his irritation, AD reports.

As the appeal in the hate speech case against PVV leader Geert Wilders continued in the high security court at Schiphol on Tuesday, his lawyer Geert-Jan Knoops demanded that the case be declared inadmissible due to political interference in the decision to prosecute, NOS reports. The prosecutor denied that any interference occurred, and pressed for the case to move forward as scheduled.

A report stating that Amsterdam is losing the fight against organized crime led to alarmed and shocked reactions from politicians in The Hague. Parliamentarians call on the government to invest more into combating this issue, the Telegraaf reports.

The report stated that the authorities have little insight into drug economy and -crime, that the police have basically given up the fight against drugs, and that the judiciary is failing to tackle real crime structures.

The Public Prosecutor's office (OM) demanded a five thousand euro fine from Geert Wilders, the leader of far right nationalist party PVV. The sentence recommendation was made during the prosecution's closing argument in a court case stemming from Wilders's political rally speech just before the elections in March 2014.

A former civil servant who was going to testify in the hate speech trial against PVV leader Geert Wilders, decided to not testify after all, according to Wilders' lawyer Geert-Jan Knoops. The man is afraid that he will be prosecuted by the Public Prosecution Service, the lawyer said to AD.