AMSTERDAM (AP) — The animal rights activist who assassinated Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was freed Friday, after serving just under 12 years in prison — years during which many of Fortuyn’s ideas, particularly his disdain of “multiculturalism” and his dislike of Muslim immigration, have become mainstream in the Netherlands.

Volkert van der Graaf killed Fortuyn on May 6, 2002, days before national elections in which Fortuyn was set to win big on an anti-immigration platform that upended the then-progressive Dutch political landscape.