Few attend UK screening of Wilders' film

The anti-Islam video Fitna was shown in the British upper house of parliament on Thursday despite the British authorities' refusal to allow its maker, Dutch member of parliament Geert Wilders, into the United Kingdom.

Only around 30 people attended the screening, five of them members of the upper house. All 743 members of the upper house were invited, as were the 646 members of the lower house, none of whom attended.

Wilders returned from London to the Netherlands on Thursday evening after being held at customs. At London's Heathrow Airport he was refused entry by the British immigration authorities, who put him on a plane back to Amsterdam shortly afterwards. Wilders said he was furious at the incident, describing it as a blow both to himself and to freedom of speech. Wilders called British prime minister Gordon Brown "Europe's biggest coward".

The ant-Islam politician and leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV) had been invited by a member of the House of Lords to show his video, but was informed by the British embassy in the Netherlands on Tuesday that allowing him to enter the UK would pose a "genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat to one of the fundamental interests of society".

Wilders was accompanied on his trip by dozens of journalists.