Dutch activist fatally shot

Reuters

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2005

AMSTERDAM A gunman killed a leftist political activist in the eastern Dutch city of Nijmegen, the police and prosecutors said Wednesday.

A prosecution spokesman confirmed that Louis Seveke, 41, had been fatally shot late Tuesday but declined to give further details.

A police spokeswoman said that nobody had been arrested and declined to comment on whether the killing might have been politically motivated.

The Dutch news agency ANP cited witnesses as saying Seveke had been shot in the head as he walked down a street in the center of Nijmegen, but they added that it was unclear whether he had been specifically targeted.

The news agency said Seveke had been a well-known leftist activist for more than 20 years and had founded a group that won a number of lawsuits against a Dutch intelligence agency for assembling dossiers on politically active people.

The Netherlands, long renowned for its political stability and social harmony, has been shaken by two high-profile political murders in the past three and a half years.

In November 2004, Theo van Gogh, a filmmaker critical of Islam, was killed by an Amsterdam-born Muslim radical. In May 2002, an animal rights activist murdered the anti-immigration politician Pim Fortuyn.