Asylum seeker Jawed S., who was arrested following the stabbing of two Americans in Amsterdam, has claimed he was motivated by insults to Islam and mentioned Dutch anti-Islamisation campaigner Geert Wilders during his interrogation.
The 19-year-old Afghan, who had been living as an asylum seeker in Germany, told investigators that he was angry about people in the Netherlands insulting Islam, NL Times reports.
Jawed S. claimed that the Netherlands “often insults the prophet Mohamed, the Koran, Islam and Allah”, mentioning Dutch firebrand Geert Wilders, leader of the country’s second most popular political party, the Party for Freedom (PVV), by name.
Wilders responded on Twitter to the mentioning of his name during the interrogation saying: “Muslim terrorists hate our way of life and our freedoms. They answer criticism of Islam with violence, like this Jawed S.,” and went on to add: “I say: close the borders and de-Islamisation!”
The attack comes just after Wilders was forced to cancel a competition which encouraged participants to draw a cartoon of the Islamic prophet Mohammed after repeated threats of violence. “To avoid any risk of victims of Islamic violence, I decided to cancel the contest,” Wilders said.
One of the main countries to oppose the contest was Pakistan, whose government celebrated the cancellation as a victory saying: “Cancellation of [the] blasphemous contest is a great moral victory of [the] Muslim Ummah.”
Several other figures in Pakistan were even more radical with a disgraced former cricketer offering a cash reward for the killing of the “Dutchmen” behind the contest and Pakistani pop singer Rabi Pirzada tweeting that anyone who draws a cartoon of the Islamic prophet should be hanged.
Dutch investigators have declared the attack on the two American tourists in Amsterdam to have a terrorism motive and have begun searches of his residence in Germany.
The attack also comes only days after a Pakistani man was taken into custody in The Hague for making death threats against Wilders on social media.