Jean Louis Bernhard Sévèke (

Venray Venray or Venraij (; li, Venroj) is a municipality and a city in Limburg, the Netherlands. The municipality of Venray consists of 14 towns over an area of , with 43,494 inhabitants as of July 2016. About 30,000 of those inhabitants live in th ...

, 28 April 1964 – Nijmegen, 15 November 2005) was a Dutch radical left activist,

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...

and

writer A writer is a person who uses written words in different writing styles and techniques to communicate ideas. Writers produce different forms of literary art and creative writing such as novels, short stories, books, poetry, travelogues, p ...

. He was known for his legal action against the

Police The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and th ...

and the Dutch intelligence service. He was murdered by former comrade Marcel Teunissen in 2005.

Life

Sévèke lived in Nijmegen from 1984, and later stopped his studies to become a full-time activist, involved in several squatting movements. He lived at the Grote Broek. In 1990 he authored a book about Dutch intelligence, called ''De tragiek van een geheime dienst'' ('The tragedy of a secret service'), and wrote for publications including Buro Jansen & Janssen, '' NRC Handelsblad'' and Vrij Nederland. He used his knowledge of security services and law to sue government agencies, and set up an organisation called Werkgroep Klachten Politieoptreden (Workgroup for complaints against acts of the police) that denounced police and judicial actions.

Death

Nijmegen Begraafplaats Daalseweg, graf Louis Sévèke

Sévèke was shot dead, aged 41, in the city centre of Nijmegen on 15 November 2005. Family and friends were baffled as to the identity of the murderer. Since that time rumours of involvement of police or secret services have abounded. A year after the murder the police seemed to have made little headway. It has been suggested that the Dutch secret service (

AIVD The General Intelligence and Security Service ( nl, Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst, AIVD; ) is the intelligence and security agency of the Netherlands, tasked with domestic, foreign and signals intelligence and protecting national s ...

) had a 24/7 surveillance on Sévèke at the time of his murder; however, there were no signs of information coming from the secret service to the police.

Teunissen

On 28 March 2007 the

public prosecutor A prosecutor is a legal representative of the prosecution in states with either the common law adversarial system or the civil law inquisitorial system. The prosecution is the legal party responsible for presenting the case in a criminal tria ...

on the case revealed that a 38-year-old man from

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte'') is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the ''"Ne ...

, named Marcel Teunissen according to the

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

police, had confessed to the murder. The murderer and victim knew each other from the squatting movement. The following day, it was revealed that revenge might have been the motive for the murder. Some people suggest that Sévèke suspected Teunissen to be an informant of the

intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can be des ...

agency, and Teunissen had "sworn revenge" in his diary for being removed from the squatting scene because of that suspicion. Sévèke's family denies that Teunissen was removed from the scene but instead went away himself as a result of a discussion on taking money from houseowners for leaving. It was also suggested that the two men were linked since Sévèke had earlier helped Teunissen escape from prison. Teunissen was convicted of the murder of Sévèke in March 2008, and was sentenced to full life imprisonment.

Life

Death

Teunissen

References

Further reading