AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Prince Johan Friso of the Netherlands and his wife Princess Mabel edited information about her past in the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, the royal family said on Friday.
Dutch Prince Johan Friso and his fiancee Mabel Wisse Smit leave Nieuwe Kerk in Delft after the funeral of Johan's grandmother Princess Juliana, March 30, 2004. Prince Johan Friso of the Netherlands and his wife Princess Mabel edited information about her past in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, the royal family said on Friday. REUTERS/Guido Benschop AS/ACM
Friso, 38, the younger brother of heir to the throne Prince Willem-Alexander, gave up his place in the line of succession in 2004 when he married Mabel Wisse Smit without official consent because of a controversial relationship she had had with a Dutch drug baron.
A spokesman for the Dutch royal family, headed by Queen Beatrix, confirmed that the entry on Wikipedia describing Mabel’s relationship with slain drug baron Klaas Bruinsma had been changed from a computer in one of the queen’s palaces.
When Prince Johan Friso asked the Dutch parliament in 2003 for permission to marry Mabel, Dutch media published details of her relationship with Bruinsma, who was shot and killed in 1991 in front of the Amsterdam Hilton hotel.
As a result, the couple decided not to seek parliament’s permission for their marriage, which resulted in Friso renouncing his right to the throne.
Mabel said she had known Bruinsma vaguely but later admitted spending several nights on his boat.
The edits were discovered by Dutch media using Wiki Scanner, an online tool that tracks changes to Wikipedia, where anyone can submit and edit entries.
According to Wiki Scanner, the entry saying Mabel provided “incomplete and false information” about Bruinsma was changed to just “incomplete information” in January 2006.
Friso and his wife are the latest in a long list of people, companies and institutions that have changed their entries in Wikipedia. It is usually considered bad taste to change one’s own entry in the online encyclopaedia.
Wiki Scanner has also revealed that changes to entries on the Iraq war and Guantanamo Bay prison have been made from CIA and FBI computers.
