May 6, 2002: Dutch Prime Minister Candidate Killed by Animal Rights Activist

Pim Fortuyn. [Source: GlamBoy69 (.com)]Dutch animal rights activist Volkert van der Graaf guns down Pim Fortuyn, a right-wing anti-immigration candidate for prime minister of the Netherlands, outside a radio station in Hilversum. Van der Graaf, the founder of Zeeland’s Animal Liberation Front (ALF) chapter before he moved on to found Milieu Offensief (Environment Offensive), had spent most of his activism filing lawsuits against large farming interests. A Milieu Offensief spokesman tells a reporter, “His weapon was the law.” Some officials believe that van der Graaf had become increasingly frustrated with his failures to effect change through legal avenues; documents found in his home indicate that he has connections to a recent outbreak of “release attacks” on a mink factory and a poultry farm, and has the floor plans of three of Fortuyn’s fellow List Party candidates for Parliament, apparently as part of further assassination plots. Fortuyn’s death at the hands of an “ecoterrorist” sets off a wave of angry editorials in European newspapers, most of which have been warning of such violence for years. Van der Graaf may have been unaware that Fortuyn was a dog lover whose environmental views were more moderate than his immigration stance; he was almost certainly aware of Fortuyn telling an activist, “I’m sick to death of your environmental movement.” [Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/2002]