Dutch anti-imigration politician Geert Wilders is blocked from Twitter after branding opposition party D-66 'suckers... who import ever more Islam'

Dutch far-right politician and anti-Islam campaigner Geert Wilders said Twitter has temporarily blocked his account following remarks he made about a political rival.

Wilders, who faces threats against him by Islamists, relies heavily on Twitter to communicate with his supporters.

He has 811,000 followers, second only to Prime Minister Mark Rutte among Dutch politicians.

He said in a statement today: 'Twitter often tolerates death threats against me, but not a factual tweet by me about a colleague. Madness!'

A spokesman for Wilders' Freedom Party sent a screenshot of his account showing the ban, which was due to expire in about eight hours.

The tweet that led to Wilders' block referred to D-66, a progressive centre-left party as 'suckers ...who import ever more Islam and then weep crocodile tears over the consequences, such as honour killings'.

A Twitter spokesman said: 'We don't comment on accounts for privacy and security reasons.

'Our Hateful Conduct policy expressly prohibits the promotion of violence, direct attacks or threats towards people in certain protected categories.'

SOURCE