Dutch politician now wants to display Muhammad cartoons

(AFP) – Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders said on Wednesday he wanted to stage a parliamentary exhibition of the cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that sparked a deadly shooting in Texas that left two dead.

“I am going to request Parliament to exhibit the same cartoons as those that were displayed in Garland,” Wilders told AFP on Wednesday, referring to the Dallas suburb where the shooting took place on Sunday.

Police said the two gunmen drove up to the conference centre in Garland, where the American Freedom Defense Initiative was organising a controversial Muhammad cartoon contest, and opened fire with assault rifles, hitting a security guard in the ankle.

A Garland police officer then shot and killed both gunmen with his service pistol.

US investigators are probing the backgrounds of the two slain gunmen after the Islamic State group claimed it had ordered the shooting.

Wilders, 51, had left the conference centre, where he made a speech criticising Islam, shortly before the incident.

“I want to send a message that if you use violence to suppress free speech the only effect is that we’ll do it even more,” Wilders said, adding “we must show we’ll not be intimidated.”