Appeals judges have upheld an 18-year jail sentence imposed on an animal rights activist who murdered Dutch populist politician Pim Fortuyn last year.
| Betcha Fortuyn's dead longer than that... |
Volkert van der Graaf, 34, was sentenced in April for shooting the controversial Mr Fortuyn just days before a May 2002 election which swept the politician's untried party into a short-lived government. The appeals judges considered that Van der Graaf suffered from a "compulsive obsessive disorder" but that this did not diminish his responsibility. "He shot the victim without being affected by any disorder that could be proved pathologically," presiding judge Jeroen Chorus said.
| "Just being a nut isn't enough..." |
Both prosecution and defence had appealed. The public prosecutor called for life imprisonment, while Van der Graaf's lawyers argued that the sentence took insufficient account of his pre-trial detention conditions and of negative comments by politicians before the case came to trial. |