Legal Adviser Dr. Youssef Al Sharif emphasized that euthanasia is a criminal in the UAE and the penalty for the perpetrator is imprisonment for a minimum of ten years, explaining that euthanasia is an act or practice that is performed to reduce the pain of people suffering from a painful and incurable disease, or A deficit in the body.
A reader says that her father (90 years) entered a coma more than 5 years ago in a hospital outside the state, and there is no hope for his recovery in the opinion of doctors, and he is currently under medical devices, accompanied by her brother, and she and her brothers feel guilty because their father tortures in front of them daily from pain throughout This period, she is contemplating agreeing to the euthanasia procedure, which is permitted by the state in which he is treated, and is forbidden in our country, wondering whether it has legal responsibility if she agrees to remove medical devices from him and return him to the state.
Dr. Youssef Al-Sharif emphasized that this matter is settled by the scholars because it is forbidden, but from a legal point of view, if incitement to euthanasia from individuals from within the UAE is proven, their act is an incitement crime, but if the perpetrator is the accompanying brother then there is no crime against him, because the foreign state No punishment for the act.
He pointed out that Article (10/1) of Federal Decree No. (4) of 2016 regarding medical responsibility stipulated that the patient’s life may not be terminated for any reason, even at his request or the request of a guardian or guardian, and article (30) has been established It is the same law for a prison sentence of no less than ten years for someone who commits such an act, without prejudice to the provisions of Islamic Sharia in that, and the ruling differs if the person doing this act is not a physician, as if one of them kills a relative or his friend to have mercy on him from the torture he suffers in He fell ill after begging him for pity, subject to the provisions of the Federal Penal Code as a premeditated murder.
However, it is considered a mitigating excuse if it is proven that the perpetrator killed with the intention of compassion for the patient, then the provisions of Article (96) of the Penal Code apply, which stipulates that if the murder took place on the basis of the compassion emitter, this is considered a mitigating excuse for punishment ”, which is known as committing the crime to (Unjust motives) In this case, the perpetrator would benefit from Article (97) of the same law, which obliged the judge, if it was proven that the mitigating excuse should be imposed, to the penalty of imprisonment that is not less than three months.
And in the case of the questioner, because if the termination of their father’s life took place outside the state in a country that does not criminalize this act, we are legally facing the crime of incitement to murder with your request to end his life, which is a crime that took place inside the state, and then you are responsible as instigators of this act, you will be punished with the same The prescribed punishment, in accordance with the provisions of Article (47) of the Federal Penal Code.