Doctor Radan acquitted of all charges
Ljubljana, 17 December - Ivan Radan, a neurologist charged with killing four terminally ill patients with lethal injections, was acquitted as a trial that lasted almost three years concluded at the Ljubljana District Court in November.
Ljubljana
The Ljubljana District Court acquits neurologist Ivan Radan was acquitted of all charges related to the manslaughter of foir terminally ill patients.
Photo: Nebojša Tejić/STA
Radan had been charged with manslaughter as well as abuse of medical prescriptions, illegal video recording of dying patients and forgery of sick leave notes, crimes for which he faced 20 years in prison. He was acquitted on all charges.
The court said the prosecution had focused on the suspect's personal circumstances too much and thus overlooked facts. The judge also highlighted the absence of material evidence and being unable to determine the cause of death of any of the suspected victims since they were not autopsied and were subsequently cremated.
Over 100 witnesses were heard by the court and multiple psychological assessments were carried out to determine whether Radan suffered from a god complex. The goal was to determine whether Radan did in fact administer deadly cocktails of drugs, including lethal doses of potassium, to several terminally ill patients between 2012 and the end of 2014 as suspected.
He had initially been charged with the murder of six patients but two charges were dropped due to a lack of evidence and the remaining four murder charges were reduced to manslaughter.
Radan has claimed innocence and never admitted to wilfully shortening patients' lives. When the charges were first made public, he said he only made it look as if he was administering lethal doses as a way of bringing attention to problems at the clinic.