Wow. The Dutch sure have a different conception of justice than we Americans do. Seriously, you assassinate your nation’s leading candidate for prime minister — and you get 12 years in prison? Can you possibly imagine someone killing an American presidential candidate and walking free 12 years later?

“The panel of three judges…were not imposing a life sentence, they said, because they had been persuaded that Mr. van der Graaf was not likely to repeat his crime.” I suppose it’s the second political assassination that really shows you’re a bad guy.

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18 April | 22:21 | bossman

Josh: Can I borrow ten bucks?

22 April | 17:08 | Sinclair

Well, if ever there was a chicken and egg scenario, this was it. There was no way that Pim Fortuyn was set to be the prime minister of The Netherlands before he was assassinated. Yet his party gained a massive sympathy vote in the aftermath of his assinassination that meant they became a power broker following the election. They are now back in "also ran" land and not likely to get the same level of public support ever again.
None of this explains the leniancy of the sentence of course.

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Joshua Benton

Joshua Benton is the director of the Nieman Digital Journalism Project at Harvard University, among other things. Before that, he was a staff writer and columnist for The Dallas Morning News. (More.)