A doctor accused of adding a sedative to an elderly woman’s coffee then administering a lethal injection as her family pinned her down is to become the first medic to be prosecuted in the Netherlands for illegal euthanasia.
The Dutch Public Prosecution Service announced in a statement on Friday that it was not clear that the 74-year-old dementia sufferer wished to die by euthanasia and that the doctor had failed to establish her consent.
The doctor will be tried in the district court of The Hague in the first criminal case of its kind since euthanasia was legalised in the Netherlands under the Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide Act 2002.
