Reeve jailed for 15 years

From Robert Schuil

Amsterdam

A court in Amsterdam has sentenced Alan Reeve, the Broadmoor escapee, to 15 years' imprisonment for the manslaughter of a Dutch policeman and the attempted manslaughter of another officer last August.

The prosecutor had asked for a 20-year sentence for murder and attempted murder on the ground that Reeve had shot the two policemen with such deliberation that it amounted to premeditation.

Although the three-man bench accepted that Reeve had shot both policemen "intentionally", it did not find him guilty of murder.

The presiding magistrate said the court had taken into consideration the 17 years Reeve spent in Broadmoor.

Reeve, aged 34, showed no cmotion as he heard the sentence. In a signed statement issued afterward he said: "Whatever happens to me the struggle will go on". He has styled himself as a left-wing r evolutionary.

Reeve, who came to Amsterdam after escaping from Broadmoor in August 1981, said at his trial that he had shot at the two policemen in panic when caught after trying to steal a bottle of Cointreau and a bottle of whisky from a supermarket.

Reeve was first sent to Broadmoor in 1964 for the manslaughter of a teenager and was convicted three years later of killing a fellow inmate.

Alan Reeve: "The struggle

will go on."