Society's Child
Fifty-year-old Frank Van Den Bleeken has been convicted of repeated rape and murder, and the "euthanasia will indeed be implemented" in the northwestern town of Bruges, a justice ministry spokeswoman told local De Morgen newspaper.
"Now the time has come," she said.
Van Den Bleeken's euthanasia request was approved in September, but no date for the procedure was set then.
He has reportedly refused to be considered for early parole, viewing himself as a threat to society. However, he found the conditions behind bars inhumane, AFP reported, citing Belgian media.
The country's government hasn't released any official statement on the matter yet.
Belgium made euthanasia legal in 2002. In 2013, the number of mercy killings carried out in the country stood at 1,807, according to the statistics cited by AFP.
The terms for euthanasia are quite strict: patients must be mentally capable, conscious, and have demonstrated a "voluntary, considered and repeated" demand to die.
Reader Comments
IMO, if they had real evidence of his guilt, the question is why wasn't he executed to begin with? 30 years in prison for what? Social compassion? Was this to make him 'suffer' or just bore him to death? Letting someone with a proven track record of such behavior live within the community in any way, shape or form is a problem. Why have they kept him around for so long? He is considered someone's pet? Is this a policy the people of Belgium support? If so, why? Did they consider it humane to keep him alive in such a state? a penal colony that can be utilized in the future for some other use? Or is serial murder and rape a petty crime in Belgium? Isn't this a problem throughout the West? Why is that so?
Why is it that some humans have such a deep seated need - or even a drive - to see wrongdoers punished and suffering?
Why is the desire for revenge - even from a non-victim - so deeply entrenched on some peoples' psyche?
Is that not also a form of evil?
It's not a desire for revenge when your goal is self-preservation, and remember that the pathologicals in power think the same way. It's always a matter of choice. If you remain prey, then you must determine who will be sacrified to these predators... and usually it is the 'survival of the fittest', whose suffering is most likely ignored in an 'out of sight, out of mind' viewpoint. If the community seeks to ignore this most basic aspect of its existence, then it has put itself on the altar for sacrifice as a willing victim of the system. It seems a question of when do we want to get off that wheel of life? When do we want to leave Purgatory? No all truths are so 'friendly-like', most have to do with the reality of the realm in which we live, which is anything but a Disney fairy tale come to life... at least for most of us, as predators like it just the way it is, and they don't want it to change... so teach the prey to view anything that threatens their authority as 'evil', and let the self-censorship do the work for you... for as long as this relationship can last, as nature does tend to put a time limit on physical matter in all its forms and relationships.
I'm sorry, it's hard for me to believe this guy suffers like a souled person would. Even a souled person who's struggling would have to be pretty messed up to become a serial rapist and murderer. What about the suffering of his victims and their families? I say euthanasia is too good for him, let him rot behind bars.