Writer and former Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali returned to the Netherlands on Monday after living in the United States and working for a prominent conservative think tank. The move came after the Dutch government said it would no longer pay for her security needs in Washington.

The Dutch government has provided Hirsi Ali with police protection since the 2004 murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a radical Islamist. Hirsi Ali became internationally prominent because of her uncompromising criticism (more...) of Islam in the wake of the slaying -- a position which has made her the subject of repeated death threats. In 2006, she left the Netherlands at the center of a scandal that would eventually cost the country's then-integration minister, Rita Verdonk, her job.

According to the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad, Hirsi Ali returned Monday to her adopted country, the Netherlands, where she is entitled to state-funded protection.