Suspect is animal rights activist

Pim Fortuyn's anti-immigration stance was notorious. He was less well-known as an animal lover who, in the absence of a human companion, doted on his lap dogs. He had even been preparing animal-friendly policies.

Volkert van der Graaf, identified yesterday as the man in police custody, belonged to Milieu Offensief (Environment Offensive) a small animals rights group. "Protecting animals is civilising people," he had declared on a website.

His concerns over animals began as a young child during fishing trips with his brother. As he grew older his sense of unease increased.

"People think it normal that you eat animals and that you let fish suffocate in nets when you catch them," he said on the website. "But inside me arose a sense of justice – such things shouldn't be happening in a civilised country, I thought, but there is no one to stand up for them."

Even working for a bird sanctuary as a 15-year-old became troublesome to him and he quit because birds caught in oil slicks were left to die slowly. "At that place it was a taboo to end a 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," he explained.

At home, Mr van der Graaf's parents refused to let him give up meat, but he became a vegetarian and later a vegan when he started his studies in Wageningen. He joined a local anti-vivisection group and fought for the right of students not to use animals in their lab work before starting work for Milieu Offensief.

"Through legal procedures we fight permits for factory farms and fur farms, using the law as our tool," he explained. He said he is not motivated as much by love for animals as a basic belief that factory farming is not right.

"For the rest I just act rationally, I don't have to be an animal friend to protect animals." He added: "Many animal protectors act from the assumption that 'nature is good', but every dark side of humans can also be found in nature."

Mr van der Graaf had not made any statement of motives to police last night. Justice officials said bullets and environmentalist material were found during a search of his home in Harderwijk, a staunchly religious town where the 32-year-old had been living for about nine months.

The murder came as "a total surprise" to his wife who has now left the town with their baby, according to the mayor Johan de Groot.

His colleagues yesterday also expressed amazement at his alleged actions, although one boy reportedly said he had heard Mr van der Graaf saying he would kill Mr Fortuyn if he ever met him.

Mr Fortuyn had been quoted as telling an established Dutch green group: "The whole environmental policy in the Netherlands has no substance any more. And I'm sick to death of your environmental movement."

Joost Eerdmans, a candidate for Mr Fortuyn's party said: "We don't have a very developed policy on animal rights. We were busy developing it."

He said Mr Fortuyn had wanted to restructure the agriculture department to make it more animal-friendly and help limit diseases like BSE. He added: "[His dogs] were his life since he didn't have a partner.

"He loved animals. There is no mistake about that."