Posted on 05/11/2002 7:04:41 PM PDT by Shermy
THREE days before Christmas 1996, Chris Van de Werken, an environment officer in the sleepy little town of Nunspeet, 40 miles east of Amsterdam, went jogging in the woods near his home. He never came back.
Alerted by gunshots, passers-by found Van de Werken's body on a cycle path. Although dozens of people were questioned, no motive was established and nobody was charged. In April 1997 the inquiry was closed. Five years later it has been reopened.
This weekend, as the Netherlands mourned Pim Fortuyn, the populist right-wing politician, police were investigating links between his assassination last Monday and what became known in Nunspeet as the "Christmas murder".
Volkert van der Graaf, 32, a militant animal rights campaigner who was arrested immediately after killing Fortuyn, had also come into conflict with Van de Werken.
Yesterday he was still refusing to give police any explanation for the shooting of Fortyun. His girlfriend Petra who gave birth to a daughter last autumn, has moved out of their small home in Harderwijk, eight miles from Nunspeet. His mother Anneke has been told by lawyers to say nothing.
The picture that has emerged from interviews with those who know van der Graaf, however, is of a gifted but obsessive man so fanatical about the rights of animals that he was prepared to take human life.
Why he chose to take Fortuyn's remains a puzzle as the Dutch prepare for elections on Wednesday. The latest polls predict that the party launched three months ago by the former sociology professor could become the second strongest in the new parliament, with almost 18% of the vote.
Van der Graaf's upbringing was typical of a middle-class provincial Dutchman. The second son of teacher, he grew up in Middelburg, a picturesque small town crisscrossed with canals in the windswept southwestern province of Zeeland. Bram Theune, who taught him mathematics at the local grammar school, remembers him as one of the quietest but cleverest of his classmates. "Volkert was very studious — in one exam he scored 99%, which was quite phenomenal," he said.
Fellow pupils remember a temper that could suddenly flare up. "I never got into quarrels at school," recalled Marcel Dellebeke, one of his classmates. "But he was different."
Passionately interested in biology, van der Graaf was already taking his first steps into the animal rights movement. He founded the Zeeland Animal Liberation Front, which daubed slogans on the facades of restaurants with frog's legs on the menu.
When van der Graaf was 17 his father Henk died. With his mother and older brother Roland, he moved a few miles south to the port of Vlissingen. There, he worked briefly at a bird sanctuary; former colleagues recall he objected when they used mousetraps.
Van der Graaf went on to study environmental hygiene at the agricultural university in Wageningen. He then moved to to a green commune, but in the early 1990s returned to Wageningen, renting a room from Richard Beumer, a former air force officer. They could not have been more different.
"He wasn't the type you could to talk to about football," Beumer recalled. "He was always worried about the environment, especially seals. He couldn't bear the idea that those dear little creatures were being clubbed to death."
Van der Graaf became a vegan and joined anti-vivisection and environmental groups. Then, in 1992, he founded Milieu Offensief (Environment Offensive), which was opposed to all animal farming. He set out to use every trick in the legal system to block permits needed by farmers to expand production.
He and his fellow activists split their areas: van der Graaf got Nunspeet and Harderwijk, and the surrounding region known as the Dutch Bible belt. Although little more than 90 minutes' drive from Amsterdam, it could be in another country. Some of its significant minority of Protestant fundamentalists put so much faith in God that they refuse medicine.
With his southern accent, van der Graaf remained an outsider, but neighbours said he was devoted to his baby girl, nicknamed Moppie. To the horror of others in the street he let his grass grow knee-high and kept chickens. Once a horse was tethered in the front garden.
Relations with farmers, many of them deeply conservative and resentful of a man they saw as a radical, deteriorated rapidly. To their fury his group fought more than 2,000 applications for farming licences, winning 70% of the cases.
Wien van den Brink, a pig farmer, fought in vain for more than five years for permission to build a new shed. Questions were asked about the financing of van der Graaf's organisation. In addition to about £100,000 in funding from the state lottery, some locals claim it was indirectly taking money from farmers in return for agreements not to block their licence applications.
Pieter Van der Camp, another farmer who fell foul of Milieu Offensief, said he managed to get the go-ahead after paying more than Ï20,000 to a broker. Milieu Offensief refused to comment last week.
In Harderwijk the local authority itself was taken to court by van der Graaf for wrongly issuing a licence that allowed a farmer to increase his livestock.
When Van der Graaf came into contact with Van de Werken, their relationship was tense. According to former colleagues, Van de Werken was willing to compromise in disputes and van der Graaf concluded he was on the side of the farmers. Then the official's body was found in the woods with two bullets in his back.
Like Fortuyn, Van de Werken was killed with 9mm silver-tip hollow-point bullets, a rare form of ammunition similar to dumdum bullets. Both men were shot in cold blood at extremely close range.
Police confirmed that van der Graaf was among those questioned at the time. Documents found on the hard disk of a computer seized from his home also point to a possible link with arson attacks in November 1999 on a plant in Milheeze, a few miles to the south, that produces feed for minks, and a series of incidents at a local poultry farm that started in 1995.
The rights and wrongs of intensive farming were never much of an issue for Fortuyn, however. If he thought about the countryside at all, it was probably the area around Provesano, in northeast Italy, where he bought a holiday home and where, as stipulated in his will, his remains will be buried.
Fortuyn's political preoccupations were largely urban. His first triumph in March came in local elections in Rotterdam, where his supporters won more than a third of the vote. His chief concern was immigration, especially from Muslim countries, and the problems he claimed it caused. "Holland is not a country, it is a city state," he said five days before his murder in an interview with The Sunday Times in his opulent Rotterdam home, filled with a mix of antiques and modern art.
Fortuyn was dismissive of the green movement, which he found humourless and tedious. In an interview last December with a Dutch environmental magazine, he sneered at worries about global warming. He was also known to favour easing restrictions on farming, especially on the rearing of mink. There could be no stronger symbol of everything van der Graaf so passionately opposed.
A police search of van der Graaf's home turned up plans of Fortuyn's house and the homes of three other prospective MPs on his party's list, including Jim Janssen van Raay, a prominent former Christian Democrat MEP. All three have been given 24-hour protection.
Police are examining claims that van der Graaf may also have stalked his prey on the morning of the assassination, following Fortuyn to a hotel in the southern town of Breda. Several witnesses claimed yesterday to have seen a man in a red baseball cap who strongly resembled van der Graaf. Whatever the motive for the killing, there is little doubt of its impact on the Netherlands. Political violence is a rarity in a country long ruled by consensus. When Fortuyn's body lay in state in Rotterdam's Laurentius cathedral on Thursday, tens of thousands queued in the baking sun to file past his coffin.
If yesterday's poll findings are confirmed on election day, the Pim Fortuyn List could pick up 27 of the 150 seats in parliament, one more than the Labour party of Wim Kok, the outgoing prime minister, and only two fewer than the Christian Democrats. Analysts expect it to join a centre-right coalition.
The party may not be a force for long, however, and some question whether it should continue at all. Fortuyn's brother Marten said it should be dissolved. "Pim is the party and the party is Pim," he said.
Peter R. de Vries, who is a crime reporter, mentioned a 9mm. But it seemed to be a special cartridge instead of the 9x19 mm (Parabellum). The rounds were longer than normal ones, 23 or 25 mm in length. And that this ammo was not used in the criminal circuit, so he got it from some one special. He didn't have a permit, by the way. So the gun was illegal.
But as far as I know police didn't confirm this, except for the illegal gun.
Note where Justin Samuel was arrested. To the best of my knowledge, Peter Young has not been caught.
ALF Activist Receives Two Year Prison Sentence
Monday, November 06, 2000
In September I wrote about the capture of Animal Liberation Front activist Justin Samuel. Samuel was arrested in Belgium after fleeing the United States to avoid federal charges related to the release of animals from fur farms. Upon his return to the United States, Samuel plead guilty to two misdemeanors.
Last week Samuel became the first person sentenced under the federal animal enterprise terrorism law and received a two year sentence in federal prison for his role in the animal releases. He was also ordered to pay more than $360,000 to business he had harmed. The sentence was the maximum allowable for misdemeanor charges under the statute.
In sentencing Samuel, federal magistrate Stephen Crocker told Samuel that, "You have the right to voice an opinion, but you're not being prosecuted or sentenced for voicing an opinion but for engaging in an act of terrorism."
Peter D. Young, who allegedly accompanied Samuel on his fur farm raids, also fled after being indicted and remains at large. The duo released about 36,000 mink from Wisconsin farms during October 1997, but were found in the area with a list of mink farms compiled by the ALF as well as equipment designed to carry out raids against fur farms.
Samuel was allowed to plea bargain to misdemeanor charges after agreeing to "make a full, complete, truthful statement regarding his involvement in violations of federal criminal statutes charged in the original Indictment, as well as the involvement of all other individuals known to him regarding the crimes charged in that Indictment. And the defendant agrees to testify fully and truthfully at any trials or hearings."
Samuel's decision to cooperate with authorities hasn't exactly endeared him to the ALF crowed, but here's hoping his testimony ensure that he'll soon be joined in prison by other animal rights terrorists.
Source:
Animal rights activist gets two years in prison. The Associated Press, November 3, 2000.
Activist sentenced for letting minks go. Kevin Murphy, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 4, 2000.
Are these environmental thugs in the mold of the Extortion King, Jesse Jackson?
Dum dum bullets in the Netherlands?????
How did he get ahold of dumdum bullets...????
What can the FR handgun enthusiasts and ammo experts tell us about this ammunition? What is the point of using it over normal hollow points when you know you'll be shooting from close range? Does anyone think it was more the symbolic significance of a "silver bullet" rather than the bullet's killing capacity? How hard is this ammo to get in the US? In the Netherlands? How much does it cost? Are the ballistics different- I mean would you have to practice specifically with that ammo if you wanted to hit something with it in a real situation? Questions, questions. If anybody has any answers please feel free to pipe up.
I don't think the "animal rights" movement is about animals at all. It's about people, and making rules for people. Hence the passion, and the willingness to kill, to have their way.
KN - I think reporters have certain rights not to reveal sources in the US, but I really doubt they can withhold crime evidence. On what ground is the newspaper saying that they won't release the photos? In any event, this is disgusting. You might call for a boycott of the newspaper.
With the enviralists, like the Smiley Face bomber, there seems to be a lack of humanity, and the idea that animals are "equal" to us consequentially fosters a belief that since humans kill animals, there is a moral equivalency in killing humans. These guys are asocial and seem to make perfect Manchurian candidates - in fact, they need no brainwashing at all.
I heard from a guy he could arrange French army handguns new in box. And you could also order Berettas and such, all illegal.
But people who buy such an illegal gun usualy are not up to a lot of good.
Or people could go to Belgium where it is much easier to obtain such a weapon.
Making him no different than any other PETA nutbag.
Every liberal is a thug.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.