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A Dutch lawyer in a major gangland case has been shot dead outside his Amsterdam home - a crime described by police as exceptionally brutal. Derk Wiersum, 44, was the lawyer for a state witness in a case against members of a violent drug gang, who are accused of five murders between 2015 and 2017. A hoodie-wearing suspect fled on foot. Police chief Erik Akerboom said "with this brutal murder, a new limit has been crossed: now even people simply doing their work no longer seem safe". Jan Struijs of the NPB police union said "organised crime has got totally...

AMSTERDAM — The animal rights activist who assassinated Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was freed Friday, after serving just under 12 years in prison — years during which many of Fortuyn’s ideas, particularly his disdain of “multiculturalism” and his dislike of Muslim immigration, have become mainstream in the Netherlands. Volkert 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.

Geert Wilders: "I am risking my life in defence of freedom in the Netherlands" Final remarks of Geert Wilders at his trial in Amsterdam, June 1st, 2011 Mister President, members of the Court, I am here because of what I have said. I am here for having spoken. I have spoken, I speak and I shall continue to speak. Many have kept silent, but not Pim Fortuyn, not Theo Van Gogh, and not I. I am obliged to speak. For the Netherlands is under threat of Islam. As I have argued many times, Islam is chiefly an ideology. An ideology...

PREMIER Peter Beattie has strongly supported freedom of speech after a second Queensland newspaper published a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed. The Rockhampton Morning Bulletin today joined Brisbane's Courier-Mail in publishing one of 12 cartoons first printed in Denmark and which have sparked a violent backlash across the Muslim world. Any depiction of Mohammed is considered blasphemous and banned in Arab countries, although not in some non-Arab Islamic countries. But Mr Beattie said he felt strongly about freedom of the press in Australia. "I strongly support their right to publish these cartoons," Mr Beattie said.

Attitudes towards Muslims are hardening even in Europe's most liberal, multicultural societies, writes James Button. WE ALL know September 11, 2001, transformed the US. But will historians say that in the long run it transformed Europe just as much, even more? It is a question worth asking as the fire lit by the publication of 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad continues to burn. Because a straight line runs from September 11 to here. September 11 enraged Pim Fortuyn and drove him into politics. Fortuyn was the maverick Dutch politician who called Islam a "backward" religion. He might have rocketed...

To day judge R. Paris ruled in the court case against Ayaan Hirsi Ali that she did not acted unlawfully when she talked about the Islam and Mohammed. A group of Muslims had started the trial to forbid her of speaking about the Islam, Mohammed and to forbid the sequel of submission. The judge said he has no indication that Hirsi Ali did grieve the Islamic people on purpose: "[Hirsi Ali] chooses in her struggle against women suppression an maltreatment consciously for a method that stimulates debate about Islam reform" But amazingly the judge also warned Hirsi Ali to be...

Amsterdam, Netherlands, Nov. 16 (UPI) -- Slain right wing politician Pim Fortuyn has been voted the greatest Dutchman of all time by television viewers in the Netherlands. Fortuyn, leader of the right-wing List party, was killed in 2002 by an ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVIST five days before the Dutch general elections. Running on an anti-immigration ticket, the party was poised to win enough parliamentary seats to become a significant political force in the country.

Television viewers in the Netherlands have voted the right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn, killed in 2002, the greatest Dutchman of all time. Mr Fortuyn, who inflamed Dutch society with fierce anti-immigration rhetoric, was shot by an animal rights activist. He beat the first William of Orange - the 17th-Century founder of the modern Dutch state - into second place. The vote came amid racial and religious tension after film-maker Theo van Gogh was shot dead by a Muslim extremist. Before his murder, Pim Fortuyn's right-wing List party was poised to make large gains in the general election of 2002, campaigning on...

WHEN Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician, collected his post from the letterbox on Wednesday he got an unpleasant surprise. Among the bills and junk mail was a letter addressing him as “ugly dog”. It told him he would soon be beheaded. It was an unnerving way to start the day. Only 24 hours earlier Theo van Gogh, the film maker who had often attacked radical Muslims, had been riding along on his bicycle when a Muslim fanatic first shot and then butchered him on a busy street with the nonchalance of an abattoir worker.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A Dutch-Moroccan man accused of killing a filmmaker critical of Islam will also be charged with membership of a group with "terrorist intentions" and conspiracy to murder a politician, prosecutors said Friday. Prosecutor Leo de Wit told a news conference the 26-year-old man, identified by Dutch media as Mohammed B., will be charged with the murder of film director Theo van Gogh, who was stabbed and shot as he cycled to work in Amsterdam Tuesday, and also with attempting to kill a policeman and a bystander. "We will argue before the judge that he is at the...

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - A suspected Muslim extremist with alleged terrorist ties was under arrest Wednesday for allegedly killing a Dutch filmmaker who received death threats after his recent movie sharply criticized how women are treated under Islam. Theo van Gogh, 47, was repeatedly shot and stabbed to death while bicycling on an Amsterdam street Tuesday. “Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Have mercy. Have mercy!” the Algemeen Dagblad newspaper quoted Van Gogh as begging his killer. Another Dutch newspaper, the Telegraaf daily, carried a large color photograph of Van Gogh’s body with a knife protruding from his chest under the...

the tragic murder of Theo van Gogh reveals about the high cost of multiculturalism Theo van Gogh was shot dead on an Amsterdam street on Tuesday morning. His assailant was a Dutch Moroccan who was wearing traditional Islamic clothing. After shooting van Gogh several times, he stabbed him repeatedly, slit his throat with a butcher knife, and left a note containing verses from the Qur’an on the body. Said Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende: “Nothing is known about the motive” of the killer. Others were not quite so cautious. A Dutch student declared: “This has to end, once and...

Wake up America: Dutch Filmmaker Theo Van Gogh is Murdered. By Ali Sina Today, November 2, 2004, the Americans are voting to elect their president. Osama bin Laden has already issued his threat that those states that vote for Bush will be targeted for terrorist attacks. Also today, the Dutch are mourning the murder of one of their freethinkers. Theo Van Gogh, a filmmaker who was the great-grandnephew of the painter Vincent van Gogh was shot and stabbed to death on an Amsterdam street after receiving death threats over a movie he made criticizing the treatment of women under Islam....

AMSTERDAM — Film director Theo van Gogh was shot and killed in Amsterdam on Tuesday morning, his production company said. Theo van GoghBy midday, police had confirmed the film director's death, but earlier reporters at the scene say Van Gogh was shot and stabbed at the front door of the city council office on the Linnaeusstraat in Amsterdam around 9am. He managed to get to the other side of the street where he was again shot and stabbed. He died at the scene, Planet News reported. Reporters at the scene said his body was covered by a white sheet. The police said...

The Dutch plans to forcibly remove tens of thousands of asylum seekers may sit ill at ease with Holland's long-standing reputation as a bastion of liberalism and laissez-faire attitudes. But the expression "Normen en waarden" - norms and values - has become a catchphrase in the country, whose residents have in recent years expressed increasing unease with sharing their homeland with foreigners who they say do not subscribe to Dutch values. The meteoric rise of the populist Pim Fortuyn - who campaigned on an anti-immigration, anti-Islam ticket prior to his assassination in 2002 - was widely interpreted as a wake-up...

The Netherlands has seen a shift in attitudes, with multiculturalism blamed for a host of ills EVERY morning Talin, an Iranian, waits for the letter she had hoped never to see. A doctor with a husband and a six-month-old baby, she has lived in Rotterdam for seven years with her parents and grandmother. But this week the Dutch Government passed a law ordering 26,000 failed asylum-seekers, herself among them, to return home, no excuses accepted. ?I can?t sleep. They say I must go back to our country, but it is not possible because we are political refugees,? she said in...

The court of appeal in Amsterdam has upheld the eighteen-year prison sentence imposed on Volkert van der Graaf for the murder of populist politician Pim Fortuyn. In contrast to the assessment at the original trial, the appeal court found that there was a risk that Van der Graaf could kill again. It also condemned the killing more strongly as a threat to the democratic process. However, the court decided not to impose a heavier sentence, due to the fact that Van der Graaf has no previous convictions. The appeal verdict represents a defeat for the Public Prosecutor's Office, which once...

<p>The killer of anti-immigration politician Pim Fortuyn said Tuesday he "still hadn't decided" whether the slaying was justified, speaking at a hearing to determine whether his 18-year prison sentence should be changed.</p> <p>Volkert van der Graaf, a 33-year-old animal rights activist, shot Fortuyn dead on May 6, 2002, throwing Dutch elections into chaos and sparking a year of political instability.</p>

The appeal case of the man charged with last year's murder of politician Pim Fortuyn is due to open in Amsterdam on Tuesday. Animal rights activist Volkert van der G. was sentenced to 18 years in jail last April. Both the prosecutors and the defendant appealed against the verdict. The prosecution lawyers are seeking a heavier sentence. They earlier demanded life imprisonment. Once again, the judges have allotted three days for the proceedings. And once again, all the facts will be reviewed in a detailed account of everything Van der G. did on the day of the murder until he...

Dutch politician's killer gets 18 years The assassin of Dutch populist politician Pim Fortuyn was jailed for 18 years today. Animal rights activist Volkert van der Graaf admitted shooting Mr Fortuyn at point-blank range nine days before the elections last May which swept the taboo-breaking politician's novice party into power. Mr Fortuyn, 54, a homosexual who courted controversy by calling for an immigration freeze and criticising Islam, was shot outside a radio station in Hilversum, near Amsterdam. Van der Graaf was arrested minutes later. "The accused went about his plan to kill the victim with calm consideration," the presiding judge...