Married Dutch couple killed by lethal injection in double-euthanasia

4th July 2024

A retired married couple died side by side in what is the latest case of double euthanasia in the Netherlands.

Jan Faber and Els van Leeningen, aged 70 and 71, were married for almost five decades, and were killed by lethal injection in early June. Neither was near death but had conditions often associated with ageing such as back pain and the onset of dementia. Pro-life campaigners have predicted that over time euthanasia will be much more widely available for simply ageing.

In the moments before their deaths, the pair were surrounded by friends and family, including their son, who had found his parents’ decision to end their lives hard to take.

Jan, who worked as a cargo boat operator, had been suffering from severe back pain for over 20 years, while his wife was diagnosed with dementia in 2022 and it was getting progressively worse.

‘I’ve lived my life, I don’t want pain anymore,’ Jan told the BBC. ‘The life we’ve lived, we’re getting old [for it]. We think it has to be stopped.’

In 2023, 9,068 people died by euthanasia in the Netherlands – up 348 on 2022.

29 couples died that way in 2022, up from 16 couples in 2021. In 2018, there were nine.