Life sentence urged for Fortuyn 'killer'

The prosecution has demanded a sentence of life imprisonment for the animal rights activist who confessed to killing the populist Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn shortly before elections last May.

Koos Plooy, the principal prosecutor, presenting closing arguments in the trial of 33-year-old Volkert van der Graaf in Amsterdam yesterday, said the nature of the crime justified the harshest sentence possible in the Netherlands, which has no death penalty.

"No one must ever again get it into his head to follow this example, to frustrate the democratic process in this criminal and undemocratic way," Mr Plooy said.

Mr Fortuyn was shot five times from behind in a car park after giving an election campaign radio interview in the town of Hilversum, near Amsterdam. He was campaigning to be Prime Minister on an anti-crime, anti- immigration platform and the murder thrust the country into political crisis.

Van der Graaf has confessed to the killing.