Pim Fortuyn bids a bizarre farewell

In life, Pim Fortuyn, the flamboyant right-wing Dutch politician who was murdered in May, was a mass of contradictions.

He championed Dutch liberal traditions such as the legalisation of drugs and prostitution and wanted to be its first openly gay prime minister. Yet he objected to Islam, and his only policy was to end immigration.

In death his contradictions continued. The man who won his party a share of power on the strength of keeping foreigners out of Holland was laid to rest yesterday on foreign soil – near his holiday home in north-east Italy – in accordance with his wishes.

Fortuyn, 54, was shot six times in the chest and head on 6 May, days before the Dutch general election, by an animal rights extremist. He was buried temporarily near his home town, Driehuis, near Amsterdam, while legal obstacles to his interment in Italy were overcome.

In a bizarre ceremony on Friday, broadcast live on Dutch TV, his white marble coffin was exhumed and taken to Rotterdam airport where it spent the night in a special morgue in a hangar.

The following morning, watched by thousands of onlookers, the plane carrying Fortuyn's body took off with two fire engines racing either side of it spouting arcs of water. Once airborne, it circled the airport in an aerial salute to Fortuyn's homeland.

In the afternoon, 5,000 more people turned out to watch Fortuyn's second burial in the village of Provesano Di San Giorgio.

A tomb cut from a single block of Italian Carrara marble will house the remains of the shaven-headed ex-sociology lecturer.

As the Dutch bade a final farewell to Fortuyn, the party he formed five months ago readied to take its place in a centre-right government.

The Pim Fortuyn List – a one-man show before his murder – stormed to second place in the most dramatic Dutch election in memory, and secured cabinet seats in a three-way coalition.