The widow of Camil A. – convicted of the quadruple murder in Enschede – wants to know whether her husband was murdered in the prison in Veenhuizen. Camil A. died there last summer. The widow was told her husband had succumbed to heart failure, but she has her doubts. Especially since the man in prison was the target of attacks on several occasions.
Camil A. (61) and his two sons ended up behind bars on suspicion of shooting four men in a grow shop in Enschede. In 2020, they were sentenced to life imprisonment, against which the three appealed.
But before this appeal could be dealt with substantively, father Camil died in August last year in the prison in Veenhuizen. After an autopsy on the body, the widow was told that Camil A. had died of natural causes.
Because both father Camil and eldest son Dejan were the target of attacks in prison on several occasions, the widow has serious doubts about the cause of death. “After all, there were several people in prison who would rather see him dead than alive,” says Benjamin van Duijn, who, together with colleague Dennis Vlielander, legally assists the widow. The woman has requested her medical file several times through her lawyers, but the prison’s medical service refuses to provide it.
“According to the prison, these types of files are officially covered by medical professional secrecy. Also towards relatives,” said counsel Van Duijn. “The medical service says it is not allowed to hand over the file, unless the husband had given explicit permission in advance.”
In this case, however, it was difficult, especially because Camil A. passed away completely unexpectedly.
Precisely because both father Camil and son Dejan have been threatened several times and therefore had to be transferred to another prison for their safety, the widow wants to see the autopsy report. “We are not saying that anything went wrong, but in view of the threats that were there, Mrs A. wants this report to be available to make sure that her husband has not been poisoned or otherwise killed. With especially because, as far as we know, her husband has never had heart problems and then just dies from one day to the next. That is why we believe that the medical service should provide insight, even if only out of humanity towards our client.”
However, the medical service of the Veenhuizen prison remains firm and, according to the lawyer, refuses to hand over the medical file. “That only reinforces the idea that there may be more going on. It is precisely by handing over this file or offering access to it that our client can put an end to all doubts.”
In the quadruple murder in Enschede at the end of 2018, four men were liquidated in broad daylight in a grow shop on Van Leeuwenhoekstraat. Father Camil A. from Hengelo and his two sons were arrested two weeks later as suspects. DNA traces of the sons were found at the crime scene, their car contained blood from one of the victims and on camera images the three can be seen together near the grow shop around the time of the murder. The trio of family members were sentenced to life imprisonment, which is unique in the Netherlands. They appealed against this sentence. That case may be pending this year. The lawsuit against the father has been dropped due to his death.