October 2, 2024
Wim van Dijk Trial Begins
Written by Wim Heesterbeek & Mees van Roosmalen
After his wife was admitted to a nursing home with Alzheimer’s, psychologist Wim van Dijk from Den Bosch immersed himself in the law of euthanasia.
His project ended with him starting to sell hundreds of ‘kits’ of the deadly Drug X to people who wanted it, something for which he appeared in court on Tuesday.
According to Van Dijk, he proceeded carefully, seeing himself as an idealist: ‘I provided it to people in need, as a tribute to my wife.’
The prosecution sees it differently and demands a prison sentence.
The Case
The case revolves around the supply of an anti-seizure drug, which Van Dijk sent together with Means X a total of 213 times. That is not allowed under the Medicines Act, the sale of Middel X is not prohibited.
Van Dijk looked relaxed in court on Tuesday, joking.
Several times, for instance, he mentions he would like to get his own set of Middel X back, the dozens of people present who came to show Van Dijk their support laugh.
The 80-year-old suspect is happy to explain the reasons for selling the suicide drug. He started it in 2020 after he noticed how much demand there is for it during meetings of the Coöperatie Laatste Wil (CLW): ‘It was like a smouldering heath fire. People came to me from all over the country.’
‘Hot buns’
In total, Van Dijk transferred 5,400 euros to Eindhoven-based Alex Schot, who supplied the stuff for 25 euros per set and had previously been convicted for it.
Van Dijk resold the sets for 50 euros each. He said he used the profits for his campaign to change the rules around euthanasia. This campaign to change the law garnered 17,000 signatures.
Scot delivered the stuff to anyone who wanted it. Van Dijk says he received his clients all at home for a ‘psychodiagnostic interview’ to assess their eligibility.
‘Hot rolls’
The Public Prosecution Service (OM) has doubts about the latter. There is email and app contact with Schot, for instance, in which Van Dijk says he needs extra sets: ‘They go like hot cakes’.
During CLW’s so-called ‘living room meetings’, they are in high demand.
Van Dijk writes that he also attends these.
To the court, he denies this: ‘Well. I don’t remember what exactly I meant by that, but I never distributed it in groups.’
According to him, he has not attended any meetings since he started trafficking Medium X.
Willing to undergo punishment
When talking about his late wife, Van Dijk gets visibly emotional. It all started with her.
When she got Alzheimer’s and ended up in a nursing home, it became clear that by law she could no longer make her own decisions about her life.
This affected Van Dijk so much that he started to look into the legislation and began his fight for a different euthanasia law.
He says he is ‘filling a void’ by doing this.
He calls his actions ‘civil disobedience’. ‘I did it openly and deliberately. I can justify myself, I am prepared to face punishment.’
Van Dijk points out that many people agree with him: ‘80 to 90 per cent of the Dutch are also in favour of a dignified end of life in their own control.’ Waiting for legislators is not an option for him:
‘Legally, nothing will happen anyway.’ In recent years, he gave interviews to various media and medical journals on the subject.
One year in prison
The public prosecutor blames Van Dijk for being ‘laughable’ about the case in court. He also did so in the app contact with Alex Schot, for instance by talking about ‘hot cakes’ when talking about Means X.
The public prosecutor calls this attitude inappropriate.
According to the public prosecutor, the same applies to the claim that Van Dijk is ‘merely civil disobedience’: ‘He tries to come across as sympathetic, as an expert psychologist.
But he shows that he is extremely shrewd in undermining euthanasia legislation.’
Even when it became known that Resource X could lead to an inhumane death, the prosecution says this did not stop him. The officer calls him ‘hard-learned’ because his site still states that he is willing to provide Means X. ‘We have to believe that then,’ the officer said.
The prosecution is demanding a one-year prison sentence, six months of which are suspended.
Signal
Van Dijk’s lawyer stressed that his client acted out of humanity, not to benefit himself. He asked the court to impose a fully suspended sentence to send a signal.
That signal would then be that violating the medicine law is not permissible to make a point about euthanasia laws.
That point, he says, should not be discussed in court but in politics.
‘We are now talking about an anti-seizure drug, nothing more and nothing less,’ he said.
The court will deliver its verdict on 15 October.
