Comment Authorities in Spain euthanized a man on Tuesday who was on trial for shooting and wounding three people at his former workplace, as well as a police officer, sparking criticism from victims who said he should not be helped to die before he goes to court. . The unprecedented case has shed light on Spain’s controversial euthanasia law, which allows patients suffering from chronic pain to undergo assisted suicide regardless of their legal status, according to court documents. Police say Marin Eugen Sabau, 46, broke into the offices of the security company he was recently fired from in the northeastern city of Tarragona and opened fire in December. Security camera footage of the shooting shows a man removing a hat and wig as he enters the office, before pulling out a gun and shooting multiple people. Blood from the victims, who were begging for their lives, pooled on the floor. After the attack, Sabau shot a police officer at a checkpoint and then barricaded himself in a farmhouse stocked with weapons, police said. Officers cornered him and shot him multiple times, causing irreversible damage to his spine, according to his plea for euthanasia. He was left partially paralyzed and had one leg amputated, injuries he said left him in chronic pain and made him eligible for euthanasia. Before he could stand trial for attempted murder, Sabau requested that it be considered a physician-assisted suicide. “I am a paraplegic. I have 45 stitches in my arm. I can’t move my left arm very well. I have screws and I can’t feel my chest,” Sabau said in a statement from the prison hospital released to local media, according to Spanish daily El Pais. Originally from Romania, Sabau said he had been a victim of racism and that his bosses had made his life a “living hell”, the paper said. In an email to his superiors before the shooting, he threatened to “take the law into my own hands,” adding: “Lessons learned in blood are not easily forgotten.” Spain is one of four European countries that allow euthanasia for patients with terminal illnesses or chronic pain, along with Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. “He has the right to a dignified death, of course, but what about compensation for the victims?” Mireia Ruiz, a lawyer for one of the injured, told local reporters. Spain’s euthanasia law, passed in March 2021, says adults with conditions causing “unbearable suffering” can choose to end their lives through physician-assisted suicide. It does not make exceptions for people who are in the midst of legal proceedings. Lawyers for the victims of the December attack asked the court to stay Sabau’s death until after the trial, but Judge Sonia Zapater Torres rejected their request. “One could say that there is a conflict of fundamental rights here,” Zapater Torres said in her ruling. The right to dignity and personal autonomy is a fundamental right that overrides victims’ right to a fair trial, he concluded.
