“The entire case surrounding Tine has been a drama, with an extremely cold and even aggressive legal decorum as a background.” Gie Nys says this on Sunday about the euthanasia process of his daughter Tine Nys in an opinion piece on the Knack website. For the first time he breaks the silence following the decision of the cassation appeal that is coming.
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“With the upcoming new chapter attached to the controversial assize trial surrounding my late daughter, it compels me to look back ”, writes Nys. His daughter Tine, a 38-year-old woman from Sint-Niklaas with severe psychiatric problems, requested and received euthanasia in 2010 after she was diagnosed with “hopeless psychological suffering”
Doctors Joris Van Hove, Lieve Thienpont and Frank De Greef were subsequently accused by the woman’s family of manslaughter with the aggravating circumstance of poisoning, for which they risked a life sentence. The family claimed that the terms of the euthanasia law had not been adhered to. On January 31, the three doctors were acquitted. “Before, during and after this traumatizing process I deliberately did not react and as a deeply hurt daddy, bowed my head and endured the lying insinuations,” Gie Nys writes now.
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In his opinion piece he denounces that “the essence of the matter has been expertly nipped in the bud”. “Whether or not the euthanasia was carried out legally remained out of the picture in this process and was completely snowed under,” he says. “That was done on purpose. Complete nonsense and irrelevant matters have predominated. An Operation Damage has been initiated by the defense, by diabolizing the family and portraying my daughter as a psychic being without a chance at birth. ”
“More new questions than answers”
The family wanted to get answers during the process. “But as we tried to find our way out of a labyrinth of contradicting statements from doctors, more and more questions arose about the course of the euthanasia procedure. In fact, more new questions were added than we received answers. I wanted to understand the why and the scheming surrounding the lightning-fast approved euthanasia, and express my horror at its clumsy execution. I am convinced that I have at least the right to the ultimate truth, nothing more, nothing less ”, says Nys.
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“The fact that it eventually became an assize case should be entirely due to parliament, which was unable to implement the necessary reforms in assize. Consequently, I do not feel responsible that it went this way ”, it says. “I never wanted a process like that, and was never intended.”
“Deep and old wounds”
Furthermore, Nys denounces the way his family was vulgarized during the process. “We, as a family, should have been on the dock ‘as an accomplice to murder as we were there on the scene that evening and not his client,’ said the defendant’s defense. This has ripped open deep and old wounds. ”
Nor should this disgusting display have taken place in such a way. Obviously, the core of the matter, which it really had to be about, was expertly nipped in the bud. Here the big bend was started and casually announced with great spectacle that this trial was an outright attack on the euthanasia law. What a mistake! On the contrary, the mistakes should have been exposed and acknowledged and not swept under the rug, which is an unethical and intellectually unfair course of action, ”said Nys.
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