THE HAGUE, 18/12/08 - The son of prominent journalist Frank Vermeulen was arrested by the police a few months ago for making death-threats to Party for Freedom (PVV) leader Geert Wilders. Newspaper NRC Handelsblad announced yesterday that Vermeulen could no longer write for its political opinion section.

HP/De Tijd weekly interviewed Wilders for its Christmas issue. Asked about his difficult relations with the media, the rightwing MP complained that Dutch journalists are "terrible". The Belgian newspaper De Standaard "had a big, substantiated article about how the Muslim terrorists separated the Muslims from the non-Muslims in the hotels in Mumbai. But the Dutch press ignored this. They are so two-faced". As an example, Wilders refers to Frank Vermeulen, chief political editor of NRC Handelsblad. He recently wrote a column "which stated in a sharp tone that I (...) was sowing hatred and a hypocrite." Three months earlier, Vermeulen "sat down with me in my office with tears in his eyes because his son had just been taken out of his bed in his house by the police - at seven o'clock in the morning, the whole street was cordoned off. This boy had threatened me with death, by telephone, via the number that he got from his father."

The journalist, Wilders goes on, "begged me please to withdraw the charge against his son. I did not do that. The same man then makes me out to be a hypocrite in his column and calls me every name in the book. I still get goose-flesh from that."

Vermeulen did not deny the allegations. But he did say to HP/De Tijd that "Wilders is exaggerating a little."

But NRC Handelsblad announced yesterday that it had decided to end Vermeulen's political columns and his PolitBlog. The question has become "a hindrance for his functioning as a professional".