30 August 2007

THE HAGUE (AFP) - Controversial Dutch Princess Mabel and her husband Prince Johan Friso edited a Wikipedia entry about her to take out a reference that she had given false information to the government, the royal information service RVD confirmed Wednesday.

Several media outlets here reported that a computer with an IP address registered to the palace of Queen Beatrix amended a sentence in the entry saying that Mabel had given "incomplete and false information" to the government over her relationship with drugs lord Klaas Bruinsma.

It was changed to say she had given "incomplete information".

The RVD confirmed the changes late Wednesday and said it was the couple themselves who had changed the entry in January last year.

The entry was quickly re-edited by another Wikipedia user who pointed out that the phrase "incomplete and false information" was a direct quote from Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende.

In 2003, when Prince Johan Friso announced his engagement to Mabel, the Dutch media quickly picked up on her past relationship with Bruinsma, who was killed in 1991.

She at first said she had only known him "vaguely" but later admitted to spending several nights on his boat.

The government forced Johan Friso to choose between his rights to the throne or his fiancee. He chose to renounce his rights and they were married in 2005.

Wikipedia is an "open-source" internet encyclopaedia, which is to say anyone with access to a computer can edit it.

After an American hacker unveiled a homemade program called Wikiscanner to pinpoint origins of Wikipedia edits earlier this month, it emerged that organisations such as the CIA, the Vatican and the Australian government had all made self-serving edits on the popular website.

[Copyright AFP 2007]

Subject: Dutch news