A retired couple from the Netherlands have been sentenced by the court to suspended sentences of one year and four months respectively for illegally distributing suicide medication.
The court in Arnhem ruled on Thursday that the two seniors had made it possible to sell “at least a thousand cans or even more, including all the associated risks” to interested parties, according to the ANP news agency. Several recipients of the drug known as ‘Meaning X’ actually committed suicide.
The couple are members of an organization of people over 70 called ‘Coöperatieve Laatste Wil’, which says it has been campaigning for years ‘for a humane end to life, on its own initiative within the framework of the law’.
Defendants are part of a ‘criminal organization’
The court classified the association as a ‘criminal organisation’, but at the same time stated that ‘the ideal of autonomy’ was paramount among its members. They are not ‘dealers of death’. The reading of the verdict was interrupted several times by supporters of the defendants in front of the courthouse with sirens and chants. Euthanasia is only legal in the Netherlands under certain medical-ethical conditions and under medical supervision.
Source: Krone
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