At least five people will appear in court in The Hague on Wednesday in a special session devoted to threats against politicians, Trouw reports.

The session has been set up to show ‘we don’t tolerate this sort of thing’, public prosecution department spokeswoman Nicolette Stoel told the paper.
The five defendents who will appear before judges on Wednesday include 18-year-old Nicolaas V from Amsterdam, charged with sending an email to anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders in April last year stating ‘fucking idiot, you will die soon’. Walter S, accused of sending a bullet by post to finance minister Wouter Bos, will also appear.
The Hague police force has a special department set up to deal with threats against politicians which dealt with 424 incidents last year. Of those, 292 were directed at Wilders.
Angry emails
The number of threats has gone up sharply in recent years, the paper points out. ‘Politicians are easy to reach via emails and websites asking for reactions. It’s easy to send an angry email,’ the paper said.
There is a wide disparity in sentencing so far. In 2007, a woman who sent over 100 threatening emails to Wilders was sentenced to a year in jail followed by psychiatric prison, but a man who sent several mails to Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen was fined €500, Trouw says.
According to news agency ANP, Wilders himself is set to appear as a witness in a different case which will be heard in Rotterdam on Friday. Rapper Mosheb is accused of threatening Wilders in a rap by saying it will be ‘bam bam’ if the rapper came across the politician.