September 8, 2024

Middel X Persists in the NL: despite the Court Case

De Volkskrant

He knows he may risk a prison sentence.

Nevertheless, former police officer Dik van Oers is trying, quite openly, to find a construction to distribute the suicide drug X ‘legally’ write Maud Effting and Haro Kraak in De Volkskrant.

In green overalls, 80-year-old Dik van Oers sits behind the smooth white table in his study.

On his hands he wears latex gloves.

In front of him he holds a bag containing a gossamer white powder he ordered from China a few weeks ago.
‘This,’ says Van Oers, ‘is the stuff it’s all about: Middel X.’

It is late July and for the first time Van Oers talks about the project concerning the suicide powder he worked on in silence for months.

Everything, he says, he did himself. And he kept it simple.

For the reporters of de Volkskrant, he demonstrates how he proceeded. He folds a piece of paper in half, pours in some powder and then gently gives small taps against the end.

Grain by grain, the powder slides down, straight into a plastic container on a scale.

Less than two minutes later, Van Oers is already putting the lid back on.

Exactly 2.5 grams. A fatal dose.

Laconic, he points to the label he stuck on it. ‘Highly toxic!!!’, it says.

He walks out the door, looking for his black hand duster.

A moment later, there is a hum: Van Oers briefly vacuums the paper and his work table, just in case he has spilled.

Of course you have to be careful, he says, but you don’t have to overdo it either.

A mouth mask? He grins. Superfluous.

And the overalls? Ah. Actually not really needed either.

2.5 grams of the powder counts as a fatal dose.

Nevertheless, this jar contains the deadly powder that has kept the police and judiciary busy for years now.

With a mega lawsuit against seven members of Coöperatie Laatste Wil (CLW), the organisation that introduced the drug in the Netherlands, the judiciary recently tried to put an end once and for all to the ‘organised and uncontrolled distribution’ of the suicide drug.

And for a while it seemed that it had succeeded.

But nothing could be further from the truth.

Under the radar things are brewing and Middel X is now making a relaunch.

In silence, Van Oers, a lawyer, former chief of police in Bussum and former chief of criminal investigation in Zeist, developed a legal construction to legally hand over the suicide drug – in his own words – to a group of 20 men.

And carried it out.

‘My method can serve as a blueprint,’ he says.

‘If this succeeds, then the road is open to everyone.’

Whether the prosecution and the courts think the same way, that is the question that Van Oers would very much like an answer to.

‘I want to do this openly, honestly and carefully, so in October I wrote a letter to Rinus Otte, the boss of the OM, telling him about this plan.

I offered to visit him to explain everything. I think the plan is foolproof, but it is also tricky. I look for the edge of the law.

So I wanted to know if he thinks this is punishable.’

Van Oers: ‘I want to do this openly, honestly and carefully.’

In the letter, he writes that, if necessary, he would ‘gladly’ submit to a test case.

‘In order to eventually, up to the highest instance, obtain a judicial opinion on this.’

Two days later, Van Oers receives a reply he still does not understand.

Legal substance

First, Van Oers, a fit octogenarian, describes to the Volkskrant how he proceeded.

He is aware of possible legal consequences. ‘I have seen the inside of a cell so many times as a commissioner,’ he says, ‘that I am really not going to sit and cry if I am locked in the cell for a few days.

Yes, my wife would find it annoying. Embarrassing.

Also because I worked in the police. But she also understands why I am doing this. She said: if you want this so much, you should do it.’

This summer, he divided 50 grams of Medium X into twenty portions.

He put these in small private safes, which he stored in a Shurgard commercial warehouse in Amersfoort.

By e-mail in late July, he sent the code of the storage facility to the 19 others.

‘Everyone came to get their locker themselves,’ says Van Oers. ‘I didn’t go to bring it.’

The doses are distributed to small, individual lockers that Van Oers stores in a box at Shurgard.

The criminality surrounding Medium X is a grey area.

It is a legal substance, which anyone could basically order for themselves.

Having Middel X in the house or using it to commit suicide is not prohibited – this is called the ‘autonomous route’.

It only becomes punishable if the drug is provided to another person, who then uses it to end their life.

Then it is considered assisted suicide, an offence punishable by up to three years in prison.

To prevent people from getting the drug too easily, the government made a covenant with the chemical industry not to sell to private individuals.

This more or less closed off the autonomous route.

Since then, trade in Middel X has gone underground; a small group of dispensers who knew the right addresses abroad bought it in bulk and resold it in smaller portions, mostly to people from circles around Last Will. Some of the providers have since been convicted.

But what he did was not dispensing, Van Oers stressed.

Because he bought Means X on behalf of 20 people.

He did so via a mandate construction.

In this, one person, the principal, receives the endorsement of a number of people, the principals, to perform a legal act in their name – in this case, the purchase of Middel X.

A classic example of a mandate is making a bid at an art auction on behalf of someone else.

‘That way,’ says Van Oers, ‘I don’t buy the resource for them, but we as a group actually buy the resource jointly. I am, legally speaking, only the executor.’

Access to Shurgard’s private storage is protected by a security code.

In his letter to Rinus Otte, Van Oers describes it as follows:

‘In this construction, each participant himself, in conjunction with the others, voluntarily and deliberately buys the resource in question, which in our opinion constitutes an independent purchase by each participant.’

Nevertheless, there is a chance that the prosecution will consider the group a criminal organisation, just like the group of CLW members, two of whom were convicted in July for participating in it.

‘I don’t think the judiciary can live up to that now,’ says Van Oers.

‘An important characteristic of a criminal organisation is that it is a lasting and structural connection, and that is not the case in this case, it is a one-off project.’

Look at the recent verdict in the murder of Peter R. de Vries, says Van Oers.

Three men were found guilty of murder, but they were acquitted of participating in a criminal organisation.

‘The judge literally said it was not a criminal organisation because it was just one murder, with no lasting organisational connection.

And that involves ruthless professional criminals. We are nothing more than a bunch of honourable people who feel they have to stand up for their own justice.’

Last Will

In the spring of 2022, Van Oers attended a meeting of Coöperatie Laatste Wil, the organisation that fights for the right of self-determination over one’s life, without the intervention of a doctor.

Shortly after, he found a channel to buy Middel X on the Internet after much effort.

‘At that meeting, to my surprise, I suddenly heard then-chairman Jos van Wijk say: oh, it’s so easy, you can order it anywhere.’

When he asked around, he was told: ’Well, it wasn’t that easy. I had to go to a lot of trouble to find an address, and now I’m also stuck with a surplus, because the minimum quantity I had to order was 50 grams.’

He laughs.

‘When I walked to the cloakroom afterwards, I was jumped on by people. They offered me hefty sums of money. There were dramatic cases among them.

One man simply begged me if he could have it. He had lost his wife in a terrible way and did not want to go through this again. He said: will you help me, please?

He doesn’t go into it, he says. But it opened his eyes.

Even privately, he saw several times how people thought they had arranged their euthanasia, but in whose case it turned out not to be so. ‘My mother died in a deplorable way,’ he says.

The group of 20 people he gathered around him wishes to remain anonymous, he says.

‘They are people between 55 and 80, one is in his late 40s. There are couples among them. Two are lawyers. One of them gave me the idea of the approach.

I don’t have any doubts about these people’s legal capacity. I am not a psychologist or psychiatrist and I have not had hours of conversations with them, but I have been able to look deep into everyone’s eyes. No one has an acute death wish.’

They all signed a contract drawn up by Van Oers, in which they promise that as soon as they do want to die, they will first try it by ‘the royal way’.

‘So euthanasia first. And if that fails, they will turn to Middel X.’

They are all aware of the fact that Van Oers will inform the judiciary, that too is in the contract they sign.

They also state that they are ‘expressly aware that free purchase of such a drug, without further security arrangements, (…) entails great risks’.

Nevertheless, they are implementing this plan ‘as a strong signal to stimulate public debate on this, in the expectation that this will eventually lead to (…) safe and clear legislation’.

Van Oers has a ‘highly developed sense of justice’.

Van Oers feels that politicians and legislators leave this problem unaddressed. ‘This is a many-headed monster. Justice thinks it has its head chopped off with the recent court case. But if there is no solution, two new ones will grow back for every head.’

Self-determination

Through his winding life path, Van Oers has often stuck his neck out, but never before has he put so much on the line as now.

After his time in the police, he made an unusual switch: he went to head the national inspection service of the Animal Protection Society.

After 12 years, he was tired and emigrated with his wife to the French Alps.

There he discovered a hidden talent: he turned out to be good at woodworking and became a sculptor of some renown; Omroep Gelderland once christened him a ‘chainsaw artist’.

Now he returns to a familiar role: fighting injustice. ‘I see a serious social problem and am outraged that it is not being solved,’ he says.

‘There is a huge group, especially older people, who want more self-determination in their own end of life and who are not getting anywhere.

As far as I am concerned, their struggle is on a par with the workers who had to fight for their rights, women who fought for the right to abortion and animal rights that we still have to fight for.’

He does not want to sound pompous, he says, but he has a ‘highly developed sense of justice’. ‘When I was already a police officer, I started studying law.

That only strengthened that feeling. And I feel I can use my qualities in this matter and contribute to society. Especially when the legislature shirks its responsibility.’

Legislation always lags behind social reality, he says. ‘Especially in medical-ethical issues. The Lower House does not want to burn its fingers on this and sticks its head in the sand. The subject has been at a standstill for decades, D66’s “Completed Life” bill lies gathering dust, with no clear perspective.

Then you have to use civil disobedience to force it to be prioritised. So that is what I am doing.’

He gives the project the name Summum ius, after Cicero’s maxim: Summum ius summa iniuria, the highest right is the highest wrong.

‘I try to do all this with as much integrity and transparency as possible, which is why I informed the judiciary well in advance. And then you get a response like this back.’

Edges of the law

Two days after he wrote a letter to the Public Prosecutor, Rinus Otte, he received a letter back.

‘On behalf of Mr Otte, I decline your request for an interview.

The public prosecutor’s position on assisted suicide is clear.

It is not possible to judge in advance whether or not your intended action is punishable.’

He sends back a ‘neat’ note.

‘I wrote that I was sorry he did not want to speak to me. To that, I got back the most boorish reply. He said he didn’t want to talk to me anymore.’

He shows the letter.

‘No further response will be given to any follow-up correspondence,’ the prosecution writes.

It is a response that taunts Van Oers and makes him even more combative.

‘If you really want me to throw my ass to the curb, it is with a letter like this. I am someone who finds it hard to put up with being thwarted.

I can take my losses well, if it is fair play. But this response from the judiciary is unreasonable. And then I start stalling.’

But legal experts say it is not surprising that Otte does not want to comment further.

Quite apart from the fact that he does not have the time to assess citizens’ potentially criminal plans, it is also difficult for him to pass judgement on them in advance, in case the prosecution later faces Van Oers in court.

Why should Otte help a citizen push the edges of the law?

Nevertheless, Van Oers stands by his point. ‘If Otte feels this cannot pass criminal muster, he would be wise to advise me against it and hold out the prospect of criminal prosecution. Then it is up to me whether or not to proceed.’

Uncanny

On 30 July, Van Oers walks through the long, sterile corridors of a Shurgard branch in Amersfoort with two moving boxes.

Everything is white: the floor, the shutters, the doors, the fluorescent light. The building is deserted, no one checks who comes in and out, only the security camera records movements.

‘It’s a bit uncanny,’ Van Oers says later on the phone.

What he is carrying also has something uncanny about it: it is twenty servings of Middel X.

A few weeks earlier, Van Oers received the package he ordered from China. The packaging says it contains tea, a lie. ‘I hadn’t asked for that,’ says Van Oers.

‘The supplier did that on its own accord, because previous orders have not passed customs.’

Inside the package is a pretty tin with a Chinese character on it, containing 50 grams of the chemical that has come to be called Middel X.

He leaves the user portions he made from it in Shurgard’s storage loft.

He has split the cost of the entire project jointly and severally: 110 euros per participant. ‘I definitely don’t want to make any earnings out of it,’ he says.

That day, he emails participants the storage code so they can collect their own portion.

At the same time, he sends a registered letter to Otte, reminding him of the previously rejected request. ‘Meanwhile, I have completed this project and a limited group of participants have been able to get hold of a suicide-adapted quantity of the drug in question through this route.’

Van Oers does not mention where the drug is stored. But he does wonder: would justice intervene? He waits a few days, a week, but nothing happens, he gets no response whatsoever. And after a few weeks, all the participants have collected their portion.

Waiting for thunderstorms

In early September, Van Oers is still waiting.

He finds himself in a somewhat peculiar situation.

He believes he has done nothing illegal, but knows that the judiciary may think otherwise. The prosecution knows exactly what happened, but nevertheless has not yet intervened. ‘I am awaiting thunderstorms,’ says Van Oers.

He is well aware that this method is not ideal. ‘It is completely clear to me that it is not desirable if there is a lethal drug in the nightstand in thousands of households in the Netherlands.

That is asking for accidents. There must be clear regulation and legislation.’

Van Oers is also familiar with the debate about how humane Middel X is.

‘I have never been to a death myself. I hear it often goes quietly, but there are also cases where it did not go well; the instructions listen closely.

You also cannot have Middel X tested for authenticity in laboratories, as I have tried several times.

That is the downside of this being criminalised. That is not my fault. If it were open and honest, there would be more certainty.’

That is why he hopes the case goes to court. ‘I would say to the judge: judge for yourself. I have not played any legal tricks.

You need not expect any shrewd legal arguments from me. I will defend myself in court and ask: do you think this is reasonable?

Or do you think this is not reasonable?

That is the essence of law.

Not whether you can escape with a letter or a bowl measure.

I think it is a good case that I am bringing.

I have done it openly and correctly.

I offer this project as a means of finding the right way forward on an issue that many are struggling with at the moment.’