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.
Another paper said that he was seen with two others in "Breda."
Immediate reports from eyewitnesses at the radio studio site "have spoken of seeing militant-type figures at the media park where the Dutch station is located." Link.
This fellow apparently works an environmentalist extortion racket for money from farmers.
He was trained from the beginning. When arrested he would only give out his name and a demand for two lawyers by name. His wife and family have closed their mouths - not even sympathy expressed.
IMO money, and somethng bigger than just a lone nut may be involved. Money payments to the family perhaps? He only faces a 20 year sentence. Amazingly, the max penalty for one murder.
Seems conservatives everywhere can't seem to stay on top and survive and fight with consistency. I hope this was not a casual phenomenon and they revert to type as the result of the death of Fortuyn. It seems conservatives in Holland come out only when they latch on to a leader and disolve when they lose one.
This is an opportunity for the right if they play it right. Hopefully someone with brains will take advantage of the situation and move the movement forward.
The 'pipe bombing kid' wrote a diatribe about environmental destruction by American industry and could have killed post office employees (or ordinary citizens.)
Al Gore's role model, the Unabomber, was an enviro-nut and HE killed people.
The tree-nuts in the Northwest 'spike' trees to kill or maim loggers.
Others are not too concerned whether people and crops get the water they need to live.
Now this loony.
One could infer with reason that the enviros are worshipping a very perverse god...
I believe I read an article today that said a car was bombed in the Netherlands.The car belonged to somebody in the other political party the ARAs would have on their hit list,IIRC.
Blast Rips Apart Car in Netherlands
Sorry, G.D., I just had to ping you on this one. :) Enviralist article par excellence.
Someone will. Regardless of what his brother says, the party was more than Pim. If it wasn't, Pim would have been content to sit at home, think whatever he wanted to think and kept his mouth shut. And 20% of the country are supporting his party for a reason. That reason isn't going away because Pim was assassinated; it's only getting stronger.
Of course, the Reform party totally blew apart after the '92 elections here, but they never got any power in Congress.
That's how it looks to me- the guy's an assassin.
According to one guy on a forum, the two others that were sighted in Breda were from the ALF and the other was from the international socialists. But the newspaper that filmed them doesn't want to cooperate with police. Noting is certain in that direction.
The BVD, the Dutch NSA, said from the beginning Volkert van der Graaf never did anything suspecious, but newspapers soon found out he was terrorizing farmers and freeing animals at night.
And now this other murder.
Also Peter R. de Vries, crime reporter, said this guy knew how to shoot. He told yesterday that he went to shoot 9mm on a range and said he wasn't able to hit 5 times in quick succession from a small distance like Volkert van der Graaf did.
Also Peter R. de Vries recieved hundered of email to investigate the case himself. De Vries also managed to prove the innocence of two man who were convicted wrongfully for rape and murder.
Also another politcian, the new leader of Livable Netherlands, Fred Teeven (a chief of police) said he wanted to supervize the police investigation.
Okay, now you've officially given me the willies. ALF are suspects in the 1999 arson of a feed mill that produced mink food (along with processing grain for farmers in the area) in Plymouth, Wisconsin at a simotaneous mink release a few miles away.
Seriously, this is the best evidence we have that the Watermelons (Green skin/Red heart) are violent shakedown artists the world over.
Guaranteed the US press will only provide the briefest, and most sanitized mentions of this case going forward, if they mention it at all.
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