The man who committed a suicide attack on the Queen's Day parade on 30 April, Karst Tates, said just before he died that Crown Prince Willem Alexander was a racist and a fascist.

The words were heard by a police officer just before Mr Tates lost consciousness. This has been revealed by an investigation of the National Investigative Police.

Bystanders killed
Their report says the attack was very probably aimed directly at the Royal Family, although the seven people who died were all innocent bystanders cheering the parade as it passed. No members of the Royal Family were injured, but they were witness to the carnage. As early as 2004, Tates was referring to a possible attack, investigators say. He told one of his former employers that one day he would be famous and be on television. When the employer asked what he was driving at, Tates said that he meant a future attack on the Royal Family.

In the course of the police investigation a reconstruction of events was made, and the Pieter Baan Centre for criminal psychology spoke to people who knew Mr Tates in order to draw up his profile.

Ill-prepared
The police investigation established that Mr Tates acted alone and that his action was ill-prepared. On Queen's Day in the city of Apeldoorn, 30 April 2009, Karst Tates drove his car at high speed through the crowds at a point where the Royal Family passed in an open-topped bus. His car crashed into a monument by the roadside, having mowed down scores of bystanders. Forensic evidence confirmed that his speed was 112 kph.

The report says that it cannot be assumed that Mr Tates knew in advance that the public would be blocking the crossroads he wanted to use, but it is evident that once he saw them, he made no effort to avoid them.

Shocking amateur footage, showing the devastation caused by the attack