Two men from Pakistan went on trial at Amsterdam’s high security court on Monday, charged with calling for the murder of PVV leader Geert Wilders, although neither man appeared before the judges and neither had sent legal representation.

The public prosecution department called for a 14-year jail term for mullah Muhammed Ashraf Jalali, who called several times on his supporters to behead or hang Wilders.

A second defendant, 29-year-old Saad Hussain Rizvi, leader of the extremist political party Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan, will hear his sentencing demand later in the day.

Wilders did take the witness stand, and told the court about the impact the death threats had on him. “In 2004 I was picked up from my home in Venlo by police officers armed with machine guns and I have not been back since,” the leader of the far right PVV said. “Since then my wife and I have lived in safe houses, prisons, army barracks and police stations to be safe.”

It is not the first time the Netherlands has tried people who have threatened Wilders without them being present.

Last year, a third Pakistani, former cricketer Khalid Latif, was jailed for 12 years in absentia after posting a video on YouTube promising 3 million Pakistan rupees to anyone who murdered Wilders and filmed the killing.

In 2019, a Pakistani man living in the Netherlands, Junaid I, was given a 10-year jail sentence for plotting an attack on the PVV leader.

The Netherlands does not have an extradition treaty with Pakistan and attempts to have the men sent to the Netherlands have failed to produce a result. The foreign affairs and justice ministries both said in a briefing that there have been “intensive talks” about the importance of the case to the Netherlands.

Those efforts will be resumed next week at the UN general assembly in New York, the briefing said.