Netherlands revives law on insulting queen

THE HAGUE, Netherlands, Aug. 1 (UPI) -- A homeless man in the Netherlands was convicted this week of insulting the country's queen under an 1881 law that had fallen into disuse.

On Tuesday, after the guilty verdict, a journalist was arrested for wearing a T-shirt that said "Queen Beatrix is a whore," Radio Netherlands reported.

The Netherlands and Spain are the only European countries where slurs aimed at the monarch or head of state are crimes. In Spain, a judge ordered the confiscation of all issues of a magazine with a cover depicting Crown Prince Felipe and his wife having sex and ordered El Jueves to turn over the name of the artist, who could face a two-year prison term.

In the Netherlands, insulting the monarch carries a prison term of up to five years.

Queen Beatrix, a 69-year-old grandmother, is no stranger to personal attacks, some of them violent. A smoke bomb was hurled at her wedding to Claus von Amsberg, a German diplomat, to protest her marriage to a man who had served at in the Wehrmacht in World War II, and her investiture in 1980 was marked by clashes between police and anarchists.