A Dutch euthanasia clinic is being investigated for ending a woman’s life because she did not want to live in a nursing home, with the euthanasia monitoring committee saying that the clinic did not observe the formal guidelines.

Prosecutors in the Netherlands are currently deciding whether to proceed with a case against the Levenseindekliniek (End of Life Clinic). There have as yet been no prosecutions for violating the guidelines on euthanasia since it was legalised in 2002.

Bioedge News reported that even in the Netherlands, where support for physician-assisted suicide is widespread, the clinic is controversial. It was set up to cater for patients whose own doctors refused to perform euthanasia and is financed by private health insurance. In the two years after it opened in March 2013, 322 people have been killed there.

The official euthanasia monitoring committee says that the clinic had not observed the formal guidelines for euthanasia. In the latest case, a woman in her 80s had been partially paralysed after a stroke. Twenty years ago she declared that she did not want to live in a nursing home, a position she reaffirmed 18 months ago.

In order to qualify for euthanasia in the Netherlands, a patient must be ‘suffering unbearably’. The clinic’s doctors said that they decided that this was the case, based on some of her gestures and her repeated use of the words ‘kan niet’ which they interpreted as ‘I can’t go on any longer like this’.

The commission, however, reported that ‘The doctor has based his decision solely on the fact that the patient was in a nursing home.’

The clinic says on its website that it stands by its decision to euthanase the woman. ‘If we only have one percent doubt about a euthanasia request, we will not go ahead,’ says its director Steven Pleiter.