Dutch protection ends for ex-lawmaker

amsterdam -- Former Dutch lawmaker Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who spent the last year at a conservative U.S. think tank, is again at the center of a controversy in the parliament she quit.

She has been under round-the-clock protection since 2004, when her friend Theo van Gogh was slain after they collaborated on a film critical of the treatment of women under Islam.

In Washington, her bodyguards were paid by the Dutch government. Now the government says it cannot pay indefinitely, and she should take care of herself.

Hirsi Ali returned to the Netherlands on Monday after the government indicated it would give no further extensions to its 12-month offer of protection, which expired in July.

On arrival, she was taken to a government safe house and has not spoken to reporters. Her lawyer, Bettina Bohler, said her client intended to return to the United States and pay for her own protection, but needed time to make the arrangements.

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said Friday that Hirsi Ali should have begun thinking earlier about new arrangements.

“You can also take the initiative yourself,” he said.

Though she published a best-selling autobiography this year -- “Infidel: My Life” -- observers say she would be hard-pressed to pay the $2.8-million annual cost of her bodyguards.

Among her defenders is Femke Halsema, leader of the Green-Left party, who said it was unfair to leave her in the lurch and argued that she had needed time to settle her permanent residency in the United States, which was granted a week ago.

The government has “created an unwanted situation in which no one takes responsibility,” Halsema said.

The Somali-born Hirsi Ali, now 37, quit parliament last year when the immigration minister tried to strip her of her Dutch citizenship for falsifying her age and name on her refugee application 14 years earlier. The minister failed, but the issue led to the collapse of the government and an early election.