Dutch politician Geert Wilders has introduced legislation to empower security services in the Netherlands to arrest and detain potential terrorists before they commit violent acts of jihad.

The avid anti-Islam watchdog delivered a statement accompanying his proposal during a parliamentary debate on ‘combating terrorism’ with Prime Minister Mark Rutte, whose majority party lost ground to Wilders’ Party For Freedom (PVV) in recent elections, likely due in part to Rutte’s weak stance on the crisis of Islamic migration and terrorism facing much of Europe.

“Mr. President, Europe is a battleground, a war zone,” Wilders declared. “Attack after attack. Almost every week. Dead, wounded. Innocent people killed, flattened and blown up. Bombs, trucks and kalashnikovs. It’s terrible.”

“Survivors remain behind in grief. Mr. President, my group shares that sadness, and mourns with all the victims – but we’re angry too, because after every terrorist attack, nothing changes the cause of all that misery.”

“We must stop immigration from Islamic countries, we must close our borders,” he continued. “We have to work on repatriation. We have to deport criminals with a dual nationality… but that’s not enough.”

Wilders described the all-too-familiar scenario that plays out after many jihadist massacres: the media and public often learn that the killers were already known to authorities as potential threats, but were allowed to roam free due to ‘insufficient evidence’ available to prompt an effective preemptive detainment.

“Mr. President, we are talking about perpetrators of terrorist acts, which, in this case, were well known to foreign intelligence services, but were not arrested, and thus simply killed innocent people,” said Wilders. “How is it possible? Why do we let that happen? We must finally introduce administrative detention. And I am proud that I will be able to hand over an initiative bill to you on behalf of some colleagues at the end of my term.”

“And that initiative proposal says that people who, because of their behaviors linked with terror or the support it, should be detained in order to protect our national security – even if there is still insufficient criminal evidence for picking them up.”

Wilders went on to point out the mission presented to security forces attempting to track the movements of thousands of suspected radicals, noting that it can require as many as 20 officers to surveil a single subject 24 hours a day – a nearly-impossible task without even considering a study Wilders often cites, conducted by the University of Amsterdam, which revealed that at least 11% of Muslims in Holland support violent jihad – a figure that represents over 100,000 Islamists in the tiny country with an active military personnel of only 50,000.

“We are in the Chamber almost every week to commemorate victims of attacks,” Wilders said in comments to De Telegraaf. “We almost always hear that the perpetrators were familiar with intelligence services. I want the AIVD to take preventive action. This bill can save lives.”

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