Our reporter Saskia Belleman reports live on the verdict. Follow her tweets at the bottom of this post.
H. has confessed that on 4 May 2019 he killed a 56-year-old woman in the Scheveningse Bosjes in The Hague. Three days later, he struck on Brunssummerheide, where he first stabbed a 63-year-old woman to death and a short time later a 68-year-old man.
H., who studied in The Hague, is challenging the eighteen-year prison sentence imposed on him by the court in Maastricht, in addition to TBS with compulsory treatment. His lawyers find the prison sentence unjustified because in their view H. was completely insane. They have argued for only a long-term TBS treatment. According to the defense, H. was in psychosis due to schizophrenia when he committed the murders. There were delusions and paranoid fears.
atrocities
“I have committed atrocities, but not of my own free will,” said H. himself at the court. Experts from the Pieter Baan Center also concluded that H. would have acted under the influence of a psychosis, but the Public Prosecution Service thinks that H. feigned symptoms of a psychosis while in the Pieter Baan Center in order to avoid a long prison sentence.
The verdict can be followed via a live stream.