The man who confessed to killing Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was jailed for 18 years yesterday for the first political assassination in the Netherlands since the Second World War.

"All considered, a sentence of life imprisonment would not be appropriate in this case," said Presiding Judge Frans Bauduin. "Therefore we are giving a fixed term of imprisonment." Prosecutors had demanded a life sentence.

Angry Fortuyn supporters in the public gallery booed and stormed out of the courtroom. One woman broke down in sobs.

The judges said they had considered as aggravating circumstances that the murder was premeditated and carried out "at close range and with deadly precision" and that it had damaged Dutch democracy.

However, they said the chance of repetition was small and that the defendant deserved a chance to be rehabilitated and rejoin society.

Volkert van der Graaf, 33, had told the court he shot Fortuyn outside a radio station on May 6, 2002, to stop him from gaining power and carrying out his anti-immigration agenda.