Belgium will give a sex offender euthanasia

Belgium has abolished capital punishment, but it has legalized euthanasia, even for small children.  Now it will euthanize a sex offender who suffers from guilt for being a serial rapist and murderer.   The prisoner had refused a chance at early parole, afraid that he would offend again, and was refused admission to a psychiatric facility.  Belgium is too humane for other options, such as chemical castration.  So, since the prisoner requested death, the state will invoke its “mercy killing” law.

From Belgium agrees to sex offender’s request for mercy killing | theSundaily:

Belgium, one of only a few countries to allow euthanasia, has accepted a serial rapist’s request that he be allowed to die, his lawyer said yesterday.

Frank Van Den Bleeken, who has spent the past 30 years in prison for repeated rape convictions and a rape-murder, has for years requested that the state help him end his life due to “unbearable psychic suffering”, lawyer Jos Vander Velpen told Belgian television.

Van Den Bleeken is to be transferred from his prison in Bruges to a hospital within the next few days where he will be euthanised, he said.

Belgium legalised euthanasia in 2002, the second country in the world to do so after The Netherlands, and logged a record 1,807 cases of euthanasia in 2013.

Its strict conditions for a mercy killing include that patients must be capable, conscious and have presented a “voluntary, considered and repeated” request to die.

Lawyer Vander Velpen said the sex offender met all legal conditions, and for the past four years had felt he “couldn’t stand to live like this any longer and could no longer accept the pain”.

“I am a human being, and regardless of what I’ve done, I remain a human being. So, yes, give me euthanasia,” Van Den Bleeken said in comments on VRT Flemish Belgian television.

Van Den Bleeken, considering himself a menace to society, had refused to be considered for early parole, but found the conditions of his detention inhumane.

He had requested a transfer to a specialised psychiatric centre in The Netherlands for treatment or, failing that, a mercy killing.

Belgian authorities denied the transfer request earlier this year. A source close to the case said Van Den Bleeken had been informed that a new centre providing appropriate psychiatric care would open later this year in Belgium.

But the convict, who in 30 years left prison only once – to attend his mother’s funeral – opted to pursue euthanasia, for which he had already received medical approval.

So I guess if a criminal is repentant and driven to despair, THEN it is all right to give him the death penalty.  But not otherwise.

HT:  Frank Sonnek