Euthanasia Doctor Brands Life Sentence a Farce

An Austrian doctor has been jailed for life after he was accused of killing a patient that died when he was not even in the building.

Surgeon Eugen Adelsmayr was back in his native Austria when the verdict was delivered in his absence, and he branded the ruling a shock.

He said: “It is hard for me to comment on this whole farcical process, the Indian doctor who was on duty at the time was cleared of all charges, and I who was not even there at the time am convicted.”

He was found guilty of euthanasia in a court in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) over the incident in a Dubai hospital in 2009. The court heard that he had been accused by a former colleague of having ordered staff not to resuscitate a quadraplegic man after he had suffered several cardiac arrests.

State prosecutors had called for the death sentence of the doctor from Bad Ischl in Upper Austria.

The doctor was supposed to be in Dubai for the final verdict but decided to no longer attend after the original report from the investigation’s commission was revealed to be a fake, with important details having been omitted and incriminating information having been added.

The doctor who has written a book about his ordeal said he is now worried that he will not be able to leave Austria and has been told he can not appeal without going back to the UAE.