Former Dutch Prime Minister Dries van Agt dies at age 93

Former Dutch Prime Minister Dries van Agt passed away on Monday. He had just celebrated his 93rd birthday last week, on February 2. Van Agt and his wife Eugenie (93) died together "hand in hand," The Rights Forum, a knowledge center on Palestine founded by Van Agt, announced on Friday.

Van Agt was Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1977 to 1982 after serving as Minister of Justice in three previous Cabinet. He was succeeded by Ruud Lubbers, who died in 2018 at the age of 78. Van Agt served as Ambassador of the European Union to the United States between 1990 and 1995.

Van Agt entered politics in the late 1960s when a senator of the Catholic People’s Party (KVP), Piet Steenkamp, asked him to help write the party’s new election program. In 1977, Van Agt led the combined list of KVP, CHU, and ARP in the parliamentary elections. These three parties combined into the CDA in 1980.

Van Agt was a dedicated CDA member until he canceled his membership in 2021 due to the Christian Democrats’ stance on Palestine. Van Agt was a longtime supporter of human rights for the Palestinian people. He accused the party of ignoring the “immense suffering inflicted on the Palestinian people.”

The Palestinian ambassador to the Netherlands, Rawan Sulaiman, offered her best wishes. “We remain eternally grateful for his principled stance, efforts, and dedication to our just cause. His voice of truth, courage, and integrity continues to give us strength, especially during these unprecedented times for the Palestinian people,” she wrote last week.

Van Agt served as Minister of Justice from 1971 to 1977 in the two Biesheuvel and Den Uyl Cabinets. During that time, he was also responsible for the Dutch policy to tolerate personal cannabis use. In 2018, at the age of 86, he smoked cannabis for the first time and called for the Netherlands to legalize the drug.

Van Agt was also Justice Minister when Moluccan activists hijacked a passenger train and held it hostage for several weeks in 1977. Van Agt eventually gave the order to end the hijacking by force. Six hijackers and two passengers were killed in the operation.

The hijacking was started by Moluccan activists who were pressing the Netherlands to promise the Moluccans an independent state. “I have always found it a horrific decision, a great burden to live with,” Van Agt said decades later.

He went on to call on King Willem-Alexander to issue a formal apology for how the Netherlands abandoned the Moluccan people during the Indonesian National Revolution. “What concerns me is how terrible it must be for the Moluccans that they have never received any sympathy from the Royal House. Never at all!” the former prime minister said in 2021.

Van Agt was the oldest former Dutch Prime Minister since the death of Piet de Jong in 2016 at the age of 101.