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Wilders suspends public activities due to security leak scare

Xinhua, February 23, 2017 Adjust font size:

The Dutch right-wing populist Party for Freedom (PVV) has halted its public activities in the Dutch elections campaign until an investigation into corruption in its leader's security team has been finished, PVV leader Geert Wilders announced on Thursday.

Wilders was supposed to hand out PVV flyers on Thursday in Volendam, a province in North Holland, but he cancelled his visit and all other public activities in the campaign for the forthcoming general elections on March 15.

A member of the security team DBB, which is tasked with protecting the Royal Family and politicians under threat like Wilders, was arrested on Monday on suspicion of leaking secret information to a criminal organization. Following the arrest, an investigation into corruption in the DBB was started.

On Thursday, Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad reported that earlier suspicions had been raised against the suspect of Moroccan descent, when he worked for the Utrecht police, also for leaking secret information. "My goodness, I did not know this," Wilders tweeted after having read the news. "What else do I not know?"

"This is enormously worrying news," Wilders added. "Until all the facts about the DBB corruption investigation are known, the PVV suspends all public activities."

The suspect was not a personal bodyguard of Wilders, but he worked for his DBB security team, studying locations the politician went to.

Wilders, who has had extra protection for years, had a meeting on his security with Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Minister of Security and Justice Stef Blok on Wednesday.

"It is terrible that Wilders needs this protection, and everyone who needs that individual protection must be able to rely on that," Rutte said afterwards. "Politicians need to do their work. Always and everywhere. That's the bottom line. We always take all necessary measures."

The PVV leads in the latest election polls, neck-and-neck with Rutte's VVD (Liberals). Last Saturday Wilders kicked off his election campaign in Spijkenisse, a province of South Holland. Endit