The man accused of murdering the Dutch politician, Pim Fortuyn, has started a hunger strike in protest at the conditions in which he is being held in an Amsterdam jail.

A spokesman for the Amsterdam public prosecutor said Volkert Van der Graaf had been refusing to eat food since Thursday.

He is continuing to drink water.

The spokesman quoted Van der Graaf's lawyer as saying his client was protesting against 24-hour-a-day lighting and camera surveillance in his cell.

Mr Fortuyn, an anti-immigration populist politician, was assassinated just days before general elections in the Netherlands in May.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service