11 September 2006

AMSTERDAM  — Princess Margarita has filed a police complaint against her ex-husband Edwin de Roy van Zuydewijn for allegedly revealing official secrets.

Police in Amsterdam indicated on Sunday that they hoped to interview De Roy van Zuydewijn on Monday.

This is strange as the police noted earlier that De Roy van Zuydewijn, a commoner, never held any public office covered by a secrecy clause.

"This is a personal affair over which I would rather not say anything further because the police must now take the lead," Princess Margarita's lawyer Gerard Kemper said on Sunday.

Lawyer Gabriël Meijers, for De Roy van Zuydewijn, insisted that his client never held office and was always "an independent business person". Kemper conceded that the police complaint might have been formulated differently.

Magazine 'Propria Cures' published an article by De Roy van Zuydewijn on 8 September. He suggested the infamous Greet Hofmans affair that shook the Dutch monarchy in 1956 was created by Prince Bernhard, a native of Germany, to distract attention from letters he wrote to Hitler and Heinrich Himmler in 1942.

Two of these letters were allegedly signed by Bernhard's wife, Queen (then Princess) Juliana. Bernhard and Juliana are the parents of the current monarch, Queen Beatrix. De Roy van Zuydewijn described Bernhard as "our greatest traitor ever".

German magazine 'Der Spiegel' ran an article in June 1956 entitled 'Zwischen Königin und Rasputin', literally meaning between queen and Rasputin. The Rasputin question was Geert Hofmans whose pacifist ideas greatly influenced Juliana. Occurring during the Cold War, the issue caused a crisis in the Dutch Royal House and Bernhard allegedly threatened to divorce Juliana if she did not break her ties to Hofmans.

The official government report into the Hofmans Affair has never been published.

[Copyright Expatica News 2006]

Subject: Dutch news