A Belgian convicted rapist and murderer who won the right to die in a landmark ruling last year will be euthanised this week.
Frank Van Den Bleeken, who is serving a life sentence, filed a request for euthanasia in 2011, citing "unbearable psychological anguish" as a result of his uncontrollable violent sexual urges, but his request was not granted until September 2014.
Belgian newspaper De Morgen reported on Saturday that the 51-year-old serial rapist would be killed by lethal injection on January 11.
In a 2014 documentary, Van Den Bleeken said he was a danger to society and would be better off dead.
"What am I supposed to do? What's the point in sitting here until the end of time and rotting away? I'd rather be euthanised," he said.
Van Den Bleeken raped and strangled Christiane Remacle, 19, as she was on her way home from a New Year's Eve party in 1989. Deemed insane and not criminally repsonsible, he was put on a prison psychiatric ward for seven years. Within weeks of his release, he assaulted three more victims, aged 11, 17 and 29, after which he was detained indefinitely.
Belgium was the second country in the world to legalise euthanasia in 2002, but has since extended its remit, including giving terminally ill children the right to die last year. Van Den Bleeken's case was the first instance of giving a prisoner the right to die and attracted much criticism from faith and human rights groups.
It is feared that his death could pave the way for other prisoners to seek to end their own life in the same way. In September there were thought to be at least 15 inmates who have already requested information about euthanasia, according to De Standaard newspaper.
Carine Brochier, project manager at the Belgium-based European Institute for Bioethics told Christian Today in September that this case was symptomatic of underinvestment in psychiatric care in Belgium. "It [euthanasia] is the death penalty. We have fought against the death penalty on an international level, but here in Belgium we say: 'Okay, you want euthanasia, you are in prison, we don't want to invest in psychiatric institutions, so we're going to kill you.'
"It is not the case of just one man. In 2013, 67 people were killed just because they said they had psychological suffering. It's a real problem, it really is a failure of our psychiatric system. He [Van Den Bleeken] should not be in prison, he should be in a special psychological hospital... we just didn't have the ways or means, the financial structure, to put him in the right space," Brochier said.
"Sadly, Belgium has been at the forefront of making euthanasia available on demand," Paul Moynan, director of CARE for Europe, said when the decision was announced last year.
"This is not a slippery slope, but a rapid avalanche by this culture of death. As Christians, we should be the first to recognise that it is not for us to decide when we die; and so in every country we should fight any attempt to weaken laws that protect life," Moynan said.
