The East Netherlands Public Prosecution Service is prosecuting seven people because they “together maintained a system in which a means of suicide was provided.” The seven are suspected of participation in a criminal organization. Two of them are also suspected of assisting suicide and providing the means for this purpose. According to the Public Prosecution Service, all persons who are now being prosecuted were involved in Coöperatie Laatste Wil (CLW). Two suspected of participating in a criminal organization were CLW board members until 2020. The Public Prosecution Service also investigated three other board members, but they will not be prosecuted.
CLW has thirty thousand members and provides information about “an end of life under your own control”. They believe that a human suicide drug should be freely available. The cooperative has always emphasized that this had to be done within the framework of the law, but that the boundaries of the law would be pushed. Those boundaries now appear to have been exceeded.
According to the Public Prosecution Service, the seven people who are being prosecuted were all involved in the “living room conversations” that CLW organized. These were meetings where people discussed ending their lives under their own control. Talking about suicide or giving general information is allowed, but the Public Prosecution Service says that after an investigation “the suspicion has arisen that it did not stop there.” According to the Public Prosecution Service, the suspects together made it possible that “the suicide powder ‘Medium CLW stopped the living room conversations in 2021 because, according to them own reporting Over time, a ‘shadow circuit’ had emerged in which the drug was facilitated against its own regulations. Agent X is the name used for a chemical that some wholesalers sell because it is used in laboratories. After ingestion, it causes a fatal oxygen deficiency in the cells.
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In July 2023, Alex S. was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for, among other things, selling the suicide drug, which was used by at least ten people to end their lives. Alex S.’s trial showed that some of his customers came to him through CLW’s living room conversations.
Current CLW chairman Rob van Doorn is “dismayed” by the Public Prosecution Service’s decision. He does not attach any consequences to the upcoming lawsuit. “To my knowledge, CLW has always complied with the law,” he says. “The former board members who are now being prosecuted are people who only wanted to do good.” Former CLW director Jos van Wijk, who is also being prosecuted, says he is not worried about the outcome: “They simply can’t have anything, because I complied with the law.”
Since its founding in 2013, the cooperative has been lobbying for amendments to the current law, which criminalizes assisted suicide. “You can only change the law if you adhere to it yourself,” says Van Doorn. Together with 29 co-plaintiffs, CLW sued the state in 2022 to enforce that Dutch people are allowed to end their lives in a dignified manner. She wanted the criminalization of assisted suicide to be abolished and for suicide drugs to become legal and available. CLW lost that case.
“We want to make it possible for people to take their own lives when they are ready,” says CLW chairman Rob van Doorn. “People need this more and more, and that development cannot be stopped with ten horses.”
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