January 12, 2025
80-year-old Suspected of Inciting Suicide with Middel X
80-year-old suspected of inciting suicide with Middel X: ‘Lie down, good trip wished’ report Haro Kraak and Maud Effting in de Volkskrant.
With the case against 80-year-old Hans D, Dutch prosecutors appear to be stepping up the hunt for Middel X even further.
Hans is suspected of inciting the suicide of a 32-year-old woman – purely on the basis of app messages.
With the ‘march on self-determination’, proponents of widening the rules around suicide want to show their support for Hans D on Thursday.
With the ‘march on self-determination’, supporters of widening the rules around suicide want to show their support for Hans D.
‘Celebration is when your eyes are finally closed and your breath is over,’ 80-year-old Hans D. writes in November 2021 to the 32-year-old woman from Bodegraven with whom he has been in intensive WhatsApp contact for days.
From his holiday destination in Gran Canaria, he communicated with her about her wish to exit life by using Middel X.
The moment she thinks she can’t take it anymore, he writes: ‘Yes, you are going to endure this, because you are a strong woman. You have suffered a lot. But there is light at the end of the tunnel: eternal peace.’
In court in The Hague more than three years later, Hans looks before him depressed but combative. With his app messages, Hans tried to give the woman mental support, he explains this Friday morning.
But it is precisely these apps he is now being slapped around with: Hans is suspected of inciting and aiding suicide.
Eighteen days after their first contact, the 32-year-old woman died after taking the suicide powder.
In a farewell letter, she wrote that she saw no other way out.
Unique case
It is the fifth case involving Middel X, but for the first time the case does not revolve around provision of suicide drugs: D. only had app contact with the woman.
That the elderly Hans is accused of inciting suicide in this regard is almost unique. If Hans is found guilty, he would be the first person in the Netherlands ever to be convicted of this.
Outside, some 20 members of Coöperatie Laatste Wil (CLW) have already expressed their views on the case.
They find it ridiculous and terrifying that Hans is being prosecuted – purely on the basis of app traffic.
‘It looks like China here,’ says one of them.
They see the case as proof that the judiciary is intensifying its hunt for CLW even further.
At its core, the case revolves around the question: what exactly falls under incitement to suicide?
According to the prosecution, it does not matter that the woman already wanted to die – she tried to obtain a gun and bought herself another suicide powder – before she approached Hans ‘Encouraging a pre-existing intention can also be incitement.’
Image: Daniel Rosenthal / de Volkskrant
‘Exquisite course’
The woman came into contact with D. through CLW, where he acted as a ‘counsellor’.
She asked D. if he would deliver Middel X, but he refused. When she managed to order the drug herself, he gave her several practical pieces of advice.
He also outlined that death with Middel X usually took an ‘exquisite course’.
‘The process is painless and without cramps and tightness,’ he wrote. ‘Wonderful isn’t it?’
A few days after her suicide, her mother received a letter from Hans D, recounting his contact with her. ‘She had completely latched on to an unwavering desire to let go of life,’ he wrote.
In court, the judge asks how he was so sure that her death wish was fixed. ‘I don’t know that,’ says Hans ‘That’s based on her words.’
The judge: ‘Can you establish through WhatsApp that someone has a genuine death wish?’
Hans: ‘No. That wasn’t my aim either. I listened to it and gave her information.’
But according to the judiciary, it was more than information; according to her, it was instructions.
‘The question is whether the woman, without help from the accused, would have managed to carry out the suicide.’
No ‘suicide society’
The judge describes how Hans says in his apps: ‘Don’t give up the fight’, ‘You know the solution is on the way’ and ‘Lie down, good trip wished’.
‘If she still had doubts,’ the judge asks, ‘isn’t she being encouraged here?’
Hans disputes that suggestion. ‘She was long past that stage,’ he says.
He says he acted on the belief that everyone is free to make their own choices.
‘I did not encourage her in any way. Nor did I stop her; essentially, I am an opponent of suicide. The CLW is not a suicide society.’ His lawyer adds that in each case it was the woman who initiated contact and that Hans D.’s app messages were mainly in response to her expressions. He describes these as respectful emotional reflections.
‘Her wish was not heard,’ he says. ‘My client did hear her wish and responded to it.’
The judge reads a message in which D. claims that her suicide would not be a rash act. Did he thereby dispel her last doubts? ‘These are quite strong words,’ says Hans D. ‘When I hear that, I think: pfff, did I write that?’
The judge insists he kept her away from help.
‘It doesn’t seem difficult to me to keep the mental health services out of your plans,’ says one.
But according to his lawyer that is only ‘half the story’, Hans D. did refer her to the GP and the GGD health service earlier.
Psychological problems
According to her family, the woman was vulnerable and unstable.
She had a low IQ, bipolar disorder, suffered from psychoses and once took an overdose.
Hans D. did not initially know about her psychiatric history, he says. ‘How do you look back on it?’ the judge asks.
‘Terrible,’ says Hans D. ‘I had hoped it had never happened.’
The judge: ‘Would you have wanted to handle it differently?’
Hans D: ‘If I had known right away that it was a young person with a psychiatric background, I would not have allowed the contact to develop.’
Justice believes that inciting suicide is a more serious offence than offering help.
‘He restricted her space to change her mind and took control at times.’
It leads to a severe request by the prosecutyor: 14 months’ imprisonment, seven of which are suspended.
Sentencing is on 24 January.
Editor’s Note – this case is reminiscent of the Michell Carter case in the US which involved involuntary manslaughter due to phone calls and text messages.
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