Section:GDN 1N PaGe:19 Edition Date:190827 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 26/8/2019 20:16 cYanmaGentaYellowb
Tuesday 27 August 2019 The Guardian •
‘Glitter revolution’ 19
Mexican women unite
against gender violence
Page 20Action shots
Thai palace releases
royal consort images
Page 21Assisted
dying case
tests law in
Netherlands
Jennifer Rankin
BrusselsA doctor went on trial in the
Netherlands yesterday in a landmark
case expected to examine the law
on whether patients with advanced
dementia can give consent to an
assisted death.
Prosecutors argue that the
unnamed female doctor “acted with
the best intentions” but broke Dutch
euthanasia law by failing to ensure the
consent of a 74-year-old woman with
advanced dementia, who may have
changed her mind about dying.
It is the fi rst time anyone has gone
on trial over a 2002 Dutch law that
allows people to ask a doctor to help
them die.
The doctor slipped a sedative into
the woman’s coff ee before adminis-
tering a lethal drug as the patient was
held down by her family and struggled
against the injection.
The woman had previously drawn
up a euthanasia statement, but pros-
ecutors say she displayed “mixed
signals” about dying.
Euthanasia has been legal in the
Netherlands since 2002 for patients
suff ering from “unbearable suff ering
with no prospect of improvement”.
The patient must have a voluntary and
sustained wish to die, and at least two
doctors must approve the request.
But there are growing questions
about whether patients with dementia
can undergo euthanasia on the basis
of a request lodged before they lost
their faculties.
“We don’t think the law is very
clear on this point and therefore we
don’t think it’s fair to give [the doctor]
a penalty,” said Vincent Veenman , a
spokesman for the public prosecu-
tor’s offi ce in The Hague. “We never
doubted that she [the doctor] had the
best intentions in doing this.”
The debate on dementia patients’
ability to consent to assisted dying has
intensifi ed since the resignation of a
medical ethicist from a regional eutha-
nasia board in 2018. Berna van Baarsen
said euthanasia practice in advanced
dementia had shifted in a direction she
could no longer defend.
“It is fundamentally impossible to
establish that the patient is suff ering
unbearably, because he can no longer
explain it,” she said.
Euthanasia of people with severe
dementia remains rare in the
Netherlands. Only two patients with
severe dementia were helped to die
in 2018, compared with 144 patients
with early dementia and 4,000 cancer
patients, according to data published
on the website of the Dutch national
broadcaster NOS.UN urges calm as
Hezbollah vents
fury over alleged
Israeli drone strike
Oliver Holmes
JerusalemThe UN called for maximum restraint
last night after a reported drone attack
in a Hezbollah stronghold south of Bei-
rut that was blamed on Israel.
A spokesman said the UN was
unable to confi rm the reports about
Sunday’s incident, the latest in a
series of attacks reported recently in
the region that have stoked a proxy
confl ict raging between Israel and Iran
across the Middle East. “The United
Nations calls on the parties to exercise
maximum restraint both in action and
rhetoric,” he said. “It is imperative for
all to avoid an escalation .”
Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasral-
lah, said Sunday’s strike was Israel’sfi rst such hostile action since the
2006 war. It was followed by another
alleged Israeli attack yesterday on an
armed Palestinian faction in eastern
Lebanon, according to the group and
Leban on’s national news agency.
The Lebanese prime minister, Saad
Hariri, told ambassadors from the UN
security council’s five permanent
members his government want ed to
avoid a “dangerous escalation” of ten-
sions , but that to do so would require
the international community to reject
Israel‘s “blatant violation”.
Lebanon’s president, Michel Aoun ,
a political ally of Hezbollah, said th e
Israeli strikes were “similar to a dec-
laration of war” and that the country
had a right to defend itself. “We are a
people seeking peace not war, and we
don’t accept anyone threatening us inany war,” he said. Israel’s military said
it would not comment on either of the
two alleged attacks.
A deepening confrontation between
Iran and Israel has threatened further
violence this month, as Israeli attacks
have reportedly spread from Syria to
Lebanon and even as far as Iraq.
The target of yesterday’s attack
was the Popular Front for the Libera-
tion of Palestine – General Command
(PFLP-GC). It is an ally of Hezbollah,
the Shia militia-cum-political bloc that
is Iran’s main proxy in Lebanon, and of
the Syrian government, which is close
to Tehran.
A PFLP-GC official said Israeli
drones had carried out the strike, but
did not cause casualties. He said his
group’s “alternatives are open in con-
fronting the Zionist enemy”.
Israel is concerned about Iran’s
growing infl uence and its ability to
target the Jewish state as it spreads
its forces and allied militias across Iraq
and Syria.
Tehran has maintained a foothold
in Lebanon for decades through Hez-
bollah, which fought a month-long war
with Israel in 2006. A bout 1,200 peo-
ple in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and
about 160 in Israel were killed.The once-volatile border between
the two countries has been mostly
calm since , but Israel has carried out
hundreds of strikes in Syria, includ-
ing on Hezbollah and other militias
allied to Tehran. Iranian forces retal-
iated last year by fi ring a barrage of
rockets at Israeli military positions in
the occupied Golan Heights, the fi rst
such direct attack of its kind.
T ensions fl ared again at the week-
end, when the Israeli army said it had
acted in Syria to prevent an Iranian
force from launching an attack on its
soil with “kamikaze” drones.
Israel rarely acknowledges its
attacks in Syria , but the prime min-
ister, Benjamin Netanyahu, issued a
statement congratulating the military
minutes after it announced the strike.
“Iran has no immunity anywhere,” he
said. “Our forces operate in every sec-
tor against the Iranian aggression.”
Nasrallah said on Sunday :“The time
when Israeli aircraft come and bom-
bard parts of Lebanon is over. I say to
the Israeli army along the border: from
tonight be ready and wait for us. What
happened will not pass.”
The Israeli army spokesman, Lt
Col Jonathan Conricus , said : “We are
alert. We ... are left wondering whether
Hassan Nasrallah really wants to drag
Lebanon into fi ghting with Israel.”▲ Pallbearers carry the coffi n of a
Hezbollah member killed in an Israeli
attack in Syria at his funeral in Beirut
PHOTOGRAPH: AFP/GETTY IMAGES1,
The number of people who lost
their lives the last time Hezbollah
and Israel went to war in 2006RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws