From the Financial Times:The 47-year-old bleached-blond Mr Wilders is answering charges relating to his claims in a 2007 newspaper column that the Koran is “fascist”, and for encouraging Muslims to tear out pages of their holy book in a 2008 film. “Geert Wilders is convinced he has said nothing that is reprehensible,” Bram Moszkowicz, his lawyer, said.
The trial is expected to last a month and could result in a fine and a prison term of up to two years.
Analysts say Mr Wilders will use the trial, which has faced repeated delays, as a platform to reinforce his credentials as a political outsider, despite his new role in support of the government.
“He has established himself as the anti-status quo figure, so he will try to turn the trial into a political event, to try to prove that indeed he is correct that there is no freedom of speech in the Netherlands,” says Dick Houtman, professor of cultural sociology at Erasmus University in Rotterdam.
Here's the schedule,
from the website Wilders On Trial:The provisional planning of the proceedings will be as follows:
October 4th, 6th and 8th: trial proceedings
October 12th: indictment
October 15th: defence
October 19th: replication and rejoinder
November 2nd: verdict
