Fortuyn assassin jailed for 18 years
The man who confessed to killing Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was jailed for 18 years today for the first political assassination in the Netherlands since the Second World War.
“All considered, a sentence of life imprisonment would not be appropriate in this case,” said Presiding Judge Frans Bauduin. “Therefore we are giving a fixed term of imprisonment.”
Prosecutors had demanded a life sentence.
Angry Fortuyn supporters in the public gallery booed the decision and stormed out of the courtroom. One woman broke down in sobs after the sentence was read out.
The judges said they had considered as aggravating circumstances that the murder was premeditated and carried out “at close range and with deadly precision” and that it had damaged Dutch democracy.
However, they said the chance of repetition was small and that the defendant deserved a chance to be rehabilitated and rejoin society.
Volkert van der Graaf, 33, had told the court he shot Fortuyn outside a radio station on May 6, 2002, to stop him from gaining power and carrying out his anti-immigration agenda.
Fortuyn was a flamboyant academic who scandalised Dutch politics by calling Islam a “backward religion,” blaming rising crime on the Moroccan and Turkish minorities and demanding a moratorium on new immigration.
The killing, just nine days before elections in which Fortuyn was running for prime minister, shocked The Netherlands and left the country in political turmoil.
Fortuyn’s leaderless party went on to make huge gains in the 2002 elections and joined a conservative governing coalition. But infighting among Fortuyn’s heirs quickly led to the collapse of the government and new elections in January.
While expressing regret at the killing, Van der Graaf testified that he believed he had prevented suffering by stopping Fortuyn’s rise to power, which he compared to that of Adolf Hitler.
But prosecutors questioned his sincerity, saying he was a calculating killer who lied about his motives and only regretted getting caught.
Van der Graaf attempted to escape on foot after the shooting but was caught moments later with the murder weapon in his pocket, gunpowder on his hands, and Fortuyn’s DNA on his trousers.
