By Abdullah Asiran
THE HAGUE (AA): An Islamophobic hate group that planted crosses on a construction site for a mosque in the eastern Netherlands will not be prosecuted, Dutch prosecutors announced on Tuesday.
Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West (PEGIDA), a far-right anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant movement, made the construction site for a mosque look like a graveyard by planting twenty-three crosses in the city of Enschede earlier this month.
The group had also posted anti-Muslim hate messages on its social media account.
The prosecutors said PEGIDA will not be prosecuted as “the words and the actions they used were shocking but did not contain any insult or discrimination against any group.”
Last year in November, mayor of Enschede described campaign against plans to build a mosque by far-right group Pegida as being like the work of the Klu Klux Klan. Onno van Veldhuizen said he was looking into legal options after the anti-Islam movement circulated a video of someone dressed as a priest, spreading pigs blood at the site where a mosque will be built in a fake religious ceremony. ‘This is disgusting. This is not our ethics,’ Van Veldhuizen said. The action is like something that the Klu Klux Klan, he said. ‘If you behave like this with a cross in the early morning, then that is what it reminds me of.’
Additional report by The Muslim News
[Photo: Protestors participate in a protest march against racism and discrimination through the city of Amsterdam, Netherlands on March 18, 2018. The march started on the De Dam Square and ended on the Museumplein. Photographer: Abdullah Aşıran/AA]
