The man who murdered flamboyant Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was freed on Friday after serving two-thirds of an 18-year sentence, the Dutch Ministry of Justice said.
Volkert van der Graaf, 44, was jailed for the 2002 shooting of the outspoken Fortuyn, an act that shattered the liberal Netherlands’ image of itself as a unified and secure society.
“I can confirm that Volkert van der Graaf has been freed on conditional release,” Dutch Ministry of Justice spokesman Jochgem van Opstal told reporters, declining to provide further details.
Van der Graaf, an animal rights activist, served just under 12 years in prison — years during which many of Fortuyn’s ideas, particularly his irreverence toward “multiculturalism” and his aversion to Muslim immigration, have become mainstream in the Netherlands.
Van der Graaf killed Fortuyn on May 6, 2002, days before national elections in which Fortuyn was set to win big on an anti-immigration platform that upended the then-progressive Dutch political landscape.
Fortuyn’s slaying shocked a nation that had not seen anything like it.
Voters flocked to the party of the martyred Fortuyn, but it lacked stability without its flamboyant leader, and the Netherlands entered a period of tumultuous politics that lasted a decade.
Still, his ideas were increasingly taken up by successor parties and by the mainstream right. Successive governments have passed laws making it more difficult to immigrate and easier to be deported; asylum seekers are confined and criminals with dual nationality are stripped of their Dutch passports.
Criminals normally receive conditional release after serving two-thirds of a sentence in the Netherlands, but Van der Graaf’s 18-year sentence was criticized as too light from the moment it was handed down.
How could a man commit the premeditated murder of a politician and walk away 12 years later?
Fortuyn supporters scheduled a protest against his release in Rotterdam, and some groups have vowed to track Van der Graaf down and kill him.
Van Opstal said Van der Graaf’s release has conditions attached, including wearing a tracking ankle band and not visiting areas related to his crime or Fortuyn’s family and political support.
There is no death penalty in the Netherlands.
In Van der Graaf’s case, judges had to choose between a maximum sentence of 20 years for an odd, but sane first-time offender — or life in prison without possibility of parole. They gave him 18 years.
Van der Graaf was a vegan with a girlfriend and infant daughter who had devoted his life to animal rights causes.
He said at trial he had seen Fortuyn as “a danger for society,” and compared his rise to that of Nazism in the 1930s.
In a letter leaked by a lawyer for the Fortuyn family, Van der Graaf in jail wrote to his girlfriend: “If I ever give a statement to judges or the media, then of course it doesn’t necessarily have to be the truth. For the outside world the truth isn’t important, it only needs to be functional.”
A small part of Fortuyn’s platform was to ditch a proposed ban on mink breeding.
Van der Graaf said at his trial and later appeal he was not yet sure whether what he did was wrong.
However, he confessed, took responsibility for his actions, offered apologies to Fortuyn’s family and promised he would never do anything like it again.
“The public prosecutors’ office has said there is no reason to think he will be a repeat offender,” Van Opstal said.
Since 2002, Fortuyn-inspired governments have introduced dozens of anti-immigration and tougher criminal laws, including making it possible for judges to grant sentences of up to 30 years, or more for terrorist acts. Average sentence lengths have increased, and life sentences have become far more common.
In an interview with national broadcaster NOS on Friday, Pim Fortuyn’s brother Marten urged supporters not to “try to play judge themselves.”
He said that if he were Van der Graaf, “I’d make sure that I went far away and could not be recognized.”
“Fortunately, Volkert van der Graaf still has a life sentence: He’ll always have to be looking over his shoulder,” he said.
Additional reporting by AFP
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was