AMSTERDAM, 19/08/09 - The Public Prosecutor's Office (OM) will not prosecute MP Geert Wilders for showing the 'Danish cartoons' of the Prophet Mohammed. The drawings are not illegal in the Netherlands, said a spokeswoman for the OM in Amsterdam yesterday.

After a Danish newspaper published 12 cartoons of the Islamic Prophet in 2006, riots broke out in several countries. The OM has now concluded that under Dutch law, the cartoons are not offensive to Muslims as a group; they are about the Prophet Mohammed, but say nothing about all Muslims. Nor do they incite discrimination or violence against Muslims, according to the OM.

Wilders put the cartoons on his website. TV programme Nova showed them on television. The OM received complaints against Wilders and Nova. Neither will be prosecuted.

Nor will the OM initiate prosecution of the Arabic European League (AEL). In reaction to the Danish cartoons, the AEL put two cartoons about Jews on its website. While the publication of one of them constitutes an offence, the OM is not prosecuting on condition that the AEL does not show the cartoon again.

The cartoon expressed the idea that Jews deliberately make up or exaggerate the Holocaust. This is illegal because it constitutes an insult to the Jews as a group. Another cartoon that the AEL showed, in which Adolf Hitler and Anne Frank were having sex, is however permissible, the OM ruled.

The OM is still investigating whether certain drawings of Gregorius Nekschot are punishable offences. This Dutch cartoonist was arrested by 10 police officers in his home in Amsterdam last year.