Saturday, January 02, 2010

Lawful Killing?

I’m including this news story not because it involves cultural enrichment — although, given that it’s about Amsterdam and Rotterdam, many of these murders may well have been committed by immigrants (and against immigrants). There is no breakdown by ethnicity for the perps, but strangely enough the number of Albanian victims is mentioned.

What drew my eye in this article was the synonym for murder: “unlawful killings”. The Netherlands has no death penalty, so what would “lawful killing” be?

Does “unlawful killings” mean “killings which were not state-licensed euthanasia”?

In any case, according to Dutch News:

Amsterdam Leads Murder League

Amsterdam is the murder capital of the Netherlands with 31 unlawful killings in 2009, up from 19 in 2008, according to new police figures.

Five of the dead were Albanian nationals, ANP reported. In total, 20 people have been arrested in connection with the deaths.

The murder rate in The Hague also went up sharply last year, from just eight in 2008 to 17. All but two cases have been solved.

In the Rotterdam region there were 24 murders this year, compared with 22 in 2008. None of the killings appeared to be gang related, police told ANP.


Hat tip: C. Cantoni.

[Post ends here]

2 comments:

mriggs said...

A lawful killing might be self-defence. I don't think there's anything odd at play here.

gsw said...

Or justifiable homicide - killing to protect others.

Case: A man/women/king kong on the top of a high building - armed with a machine gun - shooting into the crowds below.
A police/military person shoots the perp, who falls to his/her/its death.

This is not an illegal killing since there will only be an internal investigation into whether the death could have been avoided - even if the perp took the bullet in the brain.