A cartoonist who works under the pseudonym Gregorius Nekschot has been arrested on suspicion of publishing work which discriminates against Muslims and ‘people with dark skins'
, the Netherlands public prosecution department says.

Nekschot, an established cartoonist was released after spending a night in custody. His house was searched and a quantity of work taken away.

In a statement, the public prosecution department said cartoonists are by nature satirical and often insulting to others. However, Nekschot'
s work broke the boundaries of freedom of expression and artistic licence.

The arrest follows a complaint made against Nekschot in 2005 by imam Abdul Jabbar van de Ven.

The investigation is continuing.

On the 14th of May the Dutch cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot was arrested. Gregorius Nekschot is a pseudonym. Gregorius stands for the name of a pope, Nekschot for "shot through the neck", a method used by socialists of various breeds to get rid of unwanted dissidents.

Gregorius Nekschot creates highly controversial cartoons. He himself calls them ‘tasteless cartoons'
, and most people agree. By comparison, the Danish cartoons are pure propaganda for Mohammed. Strangely enough, those rather innocent Danish cartoons drew worldwide attention, while Nekschot'
s cartoons didn'
t.

That is over. On the 14th of this month Gregorius was arrested by a team of no fewer than ten police officers. He was taken into custody, and since the District Attorney deemed his works both highly offensive and commercial, he was kept locked up for two days. After release, he was told: You can forget about anonymity now. They know who you are.

This arrest creates a serious political row. The parliament, to their credit, from left to right, wants an explanation from the minister for Justice, Hirsh Balin. And it better be a good one, for more and more information comes to earth that this is pure political intimidation, if not outright state terrorism.

A broad Lower House majority requested an interlocutory debate on the arrest of cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot. Labour (PvdA), the Socialist Party (SP), the conservatives (VVD), Party for Freedom (PVV), leftwing Greens (GroenLinks) and independent MP Rita Verdonk all backed a request by centre-left D66 for a debate. As well as Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin, Education Minister Ronald Plasterk will be called to account. He is responsible for culture and media policy.

Last week's arrest of Dutch cartoonist Gregorius Nekshot (not his real name) was an absurd, scary episode that casts a depressing light on the freedoms that formerly characterized the Netherlands.

Nekshot's home was raided by a team of ten police officers who had been dispatched by the Openbaar Ministerie, the federal Dutch DA's office that works in conjunction with the Netherlands Justice Department. The cops confiscated Nekschot's computer, his sketchbooks, and other materials, then took him to a detention facility where he spent 30 hours in a concrete cell before being released without charges — but after he had been made to promise to remove eight cartoons from his website. The drawings had been the subject of a three-year-old complaint by radical Dutch muslim Abdul Jabbar van de Ven and the lefty "anti-discrimination" organizations that basically seek to censor everything that doesn't jibe with the country's official rainbow-worshiping, we-are-the-world ethos. They claim Nekshot's art incites hatred and violence.

Many of his drawings are certainly crass and crude. Sometimes, they can even be pointlessly insulting. The goatfucker references (see particularly the example in the third cartoon) are just tired, gratuitous, feeble slams, in my opinion.

The weekly magazine HP/De Tijd, a respectable news-and-opinion weekly that's been publishing a Nekschot cartoon in every issue for the last few years, has now responded to the affair in the only principled way possible: by printing, in the issue that just hit the stands, the very drawings that got Nekschot arrested.

...See the Forbidden Cartoons

The Union of Moroccan Imams in the Netherlands has questioned the arrest of cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot.

Certainly if it is really only about these cartoons, I consider the arrest remarkable, chairman Yassin Elforkani in De Pers. Debate is healthy; you are allowed to say anything. How far someone can go in the debate is a question of ethics and not a legal question, he argues.

The cabinet is more afraid of criticism of Islam than the Dutch Muslims, concludes De Pers. (...) Their attitude is considerably more matter-of-fact than that of the government in questions about freedom of speech.

The arrest of Nekschot fits into a trend, the newspaper continued. Thus, the cabinet tried to prevent MP Geert Wilders from making his anti-Koran film Fitna for fear of riots and attacks. Muslims actually reacted very mildly: not a single car went up in flames.

In the Lower House, various MPs have suggested that the arrest of Nekschot was an appeasement signal from the Netherlands to the Arab world after Fitna. The arrest after all followed a complaint - by a radical Muslim - made way back in 2005 and hence lying in a drawer for three years.

On a sunny May morning, six plainclothes police officers, two uniformed policemen and a trio of functionaries from the state prosecutor's office closed in on a small apartment in Amsterdam. Their quarry: a skinny Dutch cartoonist with a rude sense of humor. Informed that he was suspected of sketching offensive drawings of Muslims and other minorities, the Dutchman surrendered without a struggle.

I never expected the Spanish Inquisition, recalls the cartoonist, who goes by the nom de plume Gregorius Nekschot, quoting the British comedy team Monty Python. A fan of ribald gags, he's a caustic foe of religion, particularly Islam. The Quran, crucifixion, sexual organs and goats are among his favorite motifs.

...

If formally charged and taken to court, Mr. Nekschot risks up to two years in prison and a maximum fine of €16,750, or about $26,430, says his Amsterdam lawyer, Max Vermeij. He thinks the odds on his client being prosecuted are better than even but draws some comfort from recent Dutch court rulings in discrimination cases that mostly came down on the side of free speech.

Mr. Nekschot himself is very worried. I'm afraid of getting a judge who doesn't have a sense of humor, he says.

He's also worried that his identity will get exposed if he goes to court. This, says the cartoonist, could make him a target for attack like Theo van Gogh, a polemical filmmaker and foul-mouthed celebrity murdered by an Islamic extremist in November 2004. Mr. Van Gogh was a fan of Mr. Nekschot's work and posted his drawings on his own Web site, The Happy Smoker.

Justice Minister Hirsch Ballin, when grilled about the cartoon affair in Parliament, promised to protect Mr. Nekshot's anonymity so as to guarantee the suspect's safety. (The Wall Street Journal also agreed not to publish Mr. Nekschot's real name.)

But the minister, a devout Christian, added fuel to a mounting political furor by revealing the existence of a previously secret bureaucratic body, called the Interdepartmental Working Group on Cartoons. Officials later explained that the cartoon group had no censorship duties and had been set up after the 2006 Danish cartoon crisis to alert Dutch officials to any risks the Netherlands might face. The group examined Mr. Nekschot's work, say officials, but played no part in his arrest. Headed by a senior bureaucrat from a national agency coordinating counterterrorism, it draws from the intelligence service, the interior minister, the prosecutor's office and various other government bodies.

...Read full article

A Dutch cartoonist arrested for publishing cartoons on the internet targeting Muslims will not be charged, prosecutors have said.

Gregorius Nekschot's case has been closely monitored as anti-Islamic politician Geert Wilders, is facing charges of inciting hatred and discrimination.