A 33-year-old American man, Eric Jeffrey T., is facing seven years in prison and mandatory TBS after stabbing two police officers in Groningen last year.
The court was held yesterday, where the Public Prosecution Service (OM) demanded that the American man be charged with attempted murder and aggravated assault, NOS reports.
The stabbing incident
The stabbing incident took place in Groningen while the coronavirus curfew was in place in March 2021.
According to the prosecutor, two police officers were doing a curfew check when they caught two men cycling without lights and asked for identification.
Instead, one of the two men, Eric Jeffrey T., attacked the officers with a knife, stabbing one officer in the neck and the face and the other in the thigh.Â
The men then fled to France, where they were arrested within a few days.
The American man confessed to the stabbing in court. He said he was scared that his partner, Justin de G., who he was cycling with at the time and who had no ID card, would be sent back to a mental health clinic if caught by the cops.
“I want to die for her, kill for her. I regret failing,” Eric T. told the judge, reports RTV Noord. “Give me freedom, or give me death.”
In addition, Eric T. was at that point living illegally in the Netherlands since 2020 and feared being sent back to the US and separated from his partner.
Forced therapy in the US
Following examination, experts from a psychiatric clinic concluded that the American man has a mental disorder and needs to seek treatment to avoid future incidents.
The recommended treatment? TBS.
TBS (Terbeschikkingstelling) is a Dutch program which requires mentally-ill offenders to have psychological treatment after a prison sentence before they can return to Dutch society.
However, since the suspect is a foreign national without a residence status, he won’t be able to return to the Netherlands again.
Eric T. may need to undergo his prison sentence in the United States, but it’s unclear whether the TBS treatment will also be carried out by American authorities.
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