AMSTERDAM, 26/02/03 - Pim Fortuyn wished to prosecute former Prime Minister Wim Kok for incitement to hatred. His lawyers advised him not to include Kok in the charges, considering they had a better chance of winning their lawsuit that way.

The two lawyers, Oscar Hammerstein and Gerard Spong, believed their case would be stronger if charges were only brought against politicians and journalists who had linked Fortuyn with Nazi thinking. For the same reason, they persuaded their client not to prosecute then Labour (PvdA) leader Ad Melkert and then leftwing Greens (GroenLinks) leader Paul Rosenmoller, the two write in their book 'Vervolg ze tot in de hel' (Prosecute them to hell), which was published yesterday.

The popular politician Pim Fortuyn was shot dead in a car park in Hilversum on 6 May by a lone gunman. On 13 May, his lawyers placed charges of incitement to hatred against the politicians Thom de Graaf (then center-left D66 parliamentary leader), Bas Eenhoorn (conservative VVD party chairman) and Amsterdam PvdA alderman Rob Oudkerk, and against journalists Marcel van Dam (Volkskrant), Matti Verkamman (Trouw) and Pieter Storm (De Socialist), the entire editorial team of NRC Handelsblad and a number of Internet sites.

A few weeks before his death, Fortuyn had instructed Hammerstein and Spong to bring the charges if anything should happen to him. However, the Public Prosecutor's Office (OM) in Rotterdam saw no reason to accept the case, considering that there was no question of incitement to hatred. The appeal which the lawyers made against the OM's refusal to prosecute will be heard this spring behind closed doors by the appeal court in The Hague.

In the book, the lawyers try to show why a court decision is desirable in this case, using official documents, including a number of police reports and the correspondence between the two lawyers and the Dean of the Netherlands Bar Association. Hammerstein and Spong claim that although the limits applying to politicians in the area of freedom to express opinions may be more flexible than those for ordinary citizens, they must still respect the law.