Tag: Volkert Van der Graaf

More Details Emerge about Animal Rights Activist Who Allegedly Murdered Pim Fortuyn

Details emerging in the ongoing investigation of the murder of Netherlands politicians Pim Fortuyn are making the extent of his killer’s animal rights fanaticism more clear as well as suggesting possible links to other crimes.

The Sunday Times (London) reports that while in his teens, accused killer Volkert van der Graaf, 32, founded the Zeeland Animal Liberation Front which committed acts of vandalism that primarily targeted restaurants.

Van der Graaf was involved with anti-medical research and environmental groups until 1992 when he founded Environment Offensive which was opposed to all animal agriculture. Van der Graaf and others in Environment Offensive earned the enmity of farmers by relentlessly challenging applications to expand animal farms.

How Environment Offensive was funded is raising a lot of questions. It received 100,000 Pounds from the state lottery, but farmers claim that it also acted as a sort of shakedown scheme whereby farmers willing to pay enough money via a third party broker could buy off the group and avoid the legal hassles.

One such farmer, Pieter Van der Camp, claimed that he paid 20,000 pounds to just such a broker and had no more problems with Environment Offensive. The Sunday Times reported that the environmental group refused to comment on the allegations.

Van der Graaf is now a suspect in an earlier 1996 murder, and there is also evidence linking him to other animal rights-related crimes.

On December 22, 1996, somebody shot environmental officer Chris Van de Werken while he was out for a jog near his home. Van de Werken and van der Graaf had clashed before, with Van der Graaf believing that the environmental officer was far too accommodating to farmers in the area.

Moreover, the killing of Van de Werken closely resembles that of Fortuyn’s. Van de Werken was shot multiple times at very close range. The bullets police recovered from Van de Werken’s body were 9mm silver-tip hollow-point bullets — a type of ammunition that is rare in the Netherlands and just happens to be the same type of ammunition used in the Fortuyn killing.

Van der Graaf was apparently questioned about the murder at the time, but the case was closed as unsolved in 1997. It has now been reopened.

The Sunday Times also reported that documents and computer records seized from van der Graaf’s home also provide a possible link between van der Graaf and a 1999 arson attack on a plant that produced feed for mink and a series of 1995 incidents at a poultry farm.

Source:

Fortuyn killer linked to earlier death. Peter Conradi, Sunday Times (London), May 12, 2002.

Don't Pet the Animal Rights Movement

After the world learned that it was not an immigrant or a Muslim but an animal rights activist that murdered Netherlands political candidate Pim Fortuyn, there was something of a sigh of relief that the assassination would not further perturb relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in Europe. The Daily Telegraph’s Alice Thomson thinks that sort of reaction is way off the mark. Thomson writes,

Thank God he’s not a Muslim, said the commentators, but they’re wrong to be relieved. Animal rights activist may not be Al-Qa’eda, but they include terrorists, too. At worst, the fundamentalists have warped the concept of the humane care of animals into a form of human hating. As [alleged assassin Volkert] van der Graaf’s neighbour said: “He didn’t care about humans at all.”

In Britain, after the IRA and its splinter groups, fundamentalist animal rights activists have committed the worst atrocities on the mainland: the letter-bomb that injured a pest controller’s child, firebombs for doctors, hounding staff at Huntingdon Life Sciences.

Carla Lane, the television playwright who founded Protesters’ Animal Information Network, recently wrote to Tony Blair to warn of an increase by extreme animal rights activists because they were becoming disillusion with trying to achieve change democratically.

And yet, as Thomson points out, Blair’s government continues to play a game of cat and mouse with the animal rights movement, alternately saying that it will crack down on the extremism only to then turn around and try to deliver legislation to achieve the movement’s goals. This month, for example, the Labor government floated an absurd Bill of Rights for pets.

Thomson warns that this is a dangerous game to play. “Mr. Blair may think the animal rights groups are cute and containable,” she writes, “but they’ve got savage teeth and shouldn’t be petted.”

Source:

Blair could be bitten by the hands that feed him. Alice Thomson, The Daily Telegraph (London), May 10, 2002.

Animal Rights Activist "Meticulously Planned" Fortuyn Assassination

Contrary to early speculation that the assassination of Netherlands political candidate Pim Fortuyn was an opportunity killing, animal rights activist and suspected killer Volkert van der Graaf meticulously planned the murder at the relatively high-security radio and television complex.

When police searched van der Graaf’s home, they found detailed maps of the complex which van der Graaf allegedly used to plan his crime. He apparently used an unguarded door in the rear of the complex to avoid numerous security checkpoints.

Meanwhile, more information about potential motives and even a possible link to an unsolved 1996 murder emerged in media reports about van der Graaf.

Leading the speculation is the possibility that Fortuyn was murdered over a dispute van der Graaf had with a pig farmer. Van der Graaf had repeatedly squared off in court against pig farmer Wien van den Brink. Van der Graaf accused van den Brink of violating Dutch animal welfare laws. Van den Brink was also happened to be a supporter of Fortuyn.

Dutch police are also investigating van der Graaf’s possible involvement in an unsolved 1996 murder. In that case, an environmental officer who worked closely with farmers was shot multiple times and his body dumped in a nearby ditch.

Farmers who were used to lining up against van der Graaf in court described him as fanatical. Van derBrink was quoted as saying, “I thought he was a real fundamentalist. I actually wanted nothing to do with him. He was as closed as a box and convinced he was right.”

Van der Graaf spent two years fighting Peter Olofson’s application to raise cattle. Olofson described van der Graaf as a fanatic,

It was animals, animals, animals.

…

Most farmers around here know him. His mission was to destroy all our farms.

Even so, Olofson said he was shocked that van der Graaf was the prime suspect in the Fortuyn murder. “I couldn’t believe it,” Olofson told The Times of London. “He was a fanatic, but I can’t believe he murdered a person.”

Sources:

Animal activists ‘meticulously planned killing’. David Graves, The Daily Telegraph, May 9, 2002.

Activist charged with killing Fortuyn. Ian Bickerton, The Financial Times (London), May 9, 2002.

Activist remanded for Fortuyn murder: Mystery surrounds ‘quiet, hardworking’ animal rights campaigner. Ian Black, The Guardian (London), May 9, 2002.

Accused vegan was ‘a fanatic who cared only for animals’. Martin Fletcher, The Times (London), May 9, 2002.

Suspect in Dutch Political Assassination is Vegan Animal Rights Activist

Several news outlets are reporting that animal rights activist Volkert van der Graaf was arrested yesterday as the prime suspect in the assassination of Dutch political candidate Pim Fortyun.

Fortyun was known mainly for his opposition to continued immigration, but had also made statements in support of reviving fur farming.

Van der Graaf was a little known animal rights/environmental activist with a group called Environment Offensive. AnimalFreedom.Org had a page carrying what it said was a phone interview with van der Graaf, which reads,

Even in elementary school I was interested in animals, the environment and nature. I was a member of the WWF Rangers, and we did things like picking up garbage in the dunes, etc.

I also used to fish, with my brother who was two years older. I used to get a kick out of catching fish. My brother put the worms on the hook. I did think it was mean on the worms and the fish. It just wasn’t right, but apparently everyone thought it was normal.

During my high school years this feeling that something was not right, increased. People think it normal that you eat animals, and that you let fish suffocate in nets when you catch them. But inside me arose a sense of justice; such things shouldn’t be happening in a civilized country, I thought, but there’s no one to stand up for them.

When I was 15, I worked at a bird shelter in Zeeland. Only 2 percent of the birds that were brought in covered in oil survived. I wanted to prevent suffering, and I didn’t agree with the suffering of the birds that died slowly from the oil in their intestines. At that place it was a taboo to end that life. The others thought you simply had no right to end it. At the same time they put out mousetraps to kill the mice that were stealing the bird food. I left that place, I didn’t want to be inconsistent any longer.

At one point I wanted to stop eating meat, but my parents wouldn’t let me because you had to eat meat. Only after I started studying in Wageningen I gave it up. The questions remained: is leather OK, is milk OK, are eco-eggs OK?

Then I became a vegan. It took some effort, but once you are one, it becomes normal fast, you know where to find things. Sometimes when you have dinner with other people, you encounter incomprehension.
During my studies I involved myself in the use of laboratory animals. I joined a regional group of the NBBV (anti-vivisection federation), did stand work, went to work for Lekker Dier, teach at schools, I’ve been involved in several actions.

As a member of the IUOD (Inter University Consultation on Animal use) we tried to bring back the number of laboratory animals used in education. We fought for the right not to have to use test animals in our studies, we made a survey on laboratory animal use for certain subjects, and we tried to offer support to students who were against this as well and told them how they could lodge their objections. We didn’t want to impose a standard, but present facts. Students could make up their own minds based on the descriptions of animal tests and the procedure that they could follow to be exempted from animal testing. We asked them: do you want to cut into a dead piglet or into sharks that were caught as by-catch during herring fishery?

Now I’m working for Milieu Offensief (Environment Offensive) that is involved in the environment as well as animal welfare. Whatever your motives are for working here, you work together toward the same result: stopping the expansion of factory farming. The result is less pollution of the environment and less animal suffering. Through legal procedures we fight permits for factory farms and fur farms, using the law as our tool.
In the past few years we have been through as much as 2000 legal procedures, we won a lot, but now we are going to apply ourselves more to the heavy offenders of environment and animal suffering.

My actions don’t come so much from love for animals, I just have a basic standard: “what happens to animals in factory farming is not right”. For the rest I just act rationally, I don’t have to be an animal friend to protect animals.

Many animal protectors act from the assumption that “nature is good”, but every dark side of humans can also be found in nature. Protecting animals is civilizing people, as they say.

Apparently, van der Graaf decided to go well beyond legal means to impose his views.

Sources:

“What happens to animals in factory farming is not right”. Volkert van der Graaf, AnimalFreedom.Org, 2002.

Fortuyn suspect is animal rights activist -source. Abigail Levine, Reuters, May 7, 2002.