In its judgment Horion c. Belgique of 9 May 2023, the European Court of Human Rights held that there had been a violation of Article 3 of the ECHR: the case concerned Freddy Horion who has been in prison since 1979, with no realistic prospect of early release. We are now two years after the ruling of the Court and the stalemate seems complete. This deadlock is now leading Freddy Horion to take control of the situation: he has chosen to walk the path towards a self-chosen death.
On 9 May 2023, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) condemned Belgium for a violation of Article 3 ECHR. The ECtHR stated that the sentence execution of Horion, who had been in prison for almost 44 years at the time of the ruling, was at an impasse. The admission to a forensic psychiatric unit, proposed by a three-member panel of experts in January 2018 and considered by the sentence execution court as a necessary step in his pathway out of prison, turned out to be practically unachievable: no institution wanted to admit him because he did not have the status of an internee.
Horion had therefore been in a hopeless situation since early 2018: an extended stay in prison was no longer necessary, but the only way out turned out to be a dead end, making it impossible for him to work towards reintegration. In a judgment of 13 November 2023, the Antwerp Court of Appeal backed the ECtHR’s ruling: the Antwerp court obliged the Belgian state to admit Horion to an institution outside prison within six months. This judgment was appealed (cassation) by the Belgian state, which until now – more than a year later – has not yet been heard. This would happen in the first half of 2025, according to the latest action plan (20 March 2025) that Belgium sent to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe.
Internment
Meanwhile, we are two years after the Horion judgment: what avenues has Belgium pursued since then to get out of this impasse? The first avenue is that of internment. The reasoning is simple: internment would make Horion eligible for placement in a forensic psychiatric unit and that would immediately solve the problem. The Belgian government explained this path in its communication to the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers on 26 October 2023. Art 77/1 et seq. of the Internment Act provides for this possibility for convicted persons ‘…in whom, during detention, a mental disorder of a lasting nature is diagnosed by the prison psychiatrist which destroys or seriously impairs his judgement or control over his actions, or and in respect of whom there is a danger that, as a result of his mental disorder, he will commit again crimes as referred to in Article 9, § 1, 1°’.
However, in the first action plan (19 February 2024) that Belgium sent to the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers as a follow-up to the judgment, Belgium already had to announce that this turned out to be a dead end. The psychiatrist at Hasselt prison had examined Horion, but could not establish any such mental disorder.
As a result this first option was immediately off the table. And fortunately so: after all, this attempt at internment looked very much like a ‘If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain’-strategy. In se, this was a questionable strategy that attempted to break the stalemate with the help of psychiatry – and an accompanying change in legal labels.
House of transition
The second path is that of the transition house. This is a promising option: after all, transition houses were explicitly created to facilitate the transition to free society. On its website, the Department of Justice describes the objective as follows: ‘Long-sentenced prisoners who are already well advanced in their detention gradually rebuild their lives there under intensive supervision, reducing the risk of recidivism.’ In its ruling of 13 March 2023, which rejected an application for electronic monitoring, the Ghent sentence execution court had indicated that placement in a transition house also qualifies as a ‘possible intermediate step’. The Antwerp Court of Appeal also referred to this in its judgment of 13 November 2023: ‘It appears to the court that this admission could involve both a forensic psychiatric unit and a transition house. There is nothing that indicates that Mr Horion opposes the latter’.
How does the Belgian state view this option? Already in its communication of 26 October 2023, Belgium indicated that it considered this an interesting track: at that time, internment was still the preferred option, but placement in a transition house was not excluded. But even this option was soon abandoned. In its judgment of 13 March 2023, the Ghent sentence execution court reported that a first application, for which the management team of Hasselt prison had formulated a positive advice, was refused: sexual offences were considered to be an exclusion criterion for a stay in a transition house. However, the court considered that no sexual paraphilia was present ‘…as a result of which an exception could be made in this case’. A new intake took place on 5 April 2023. Again, Horion returned with empty hands: in the sentence execution court’s verdict (dated 24 June 2024), we read that the transition house cannot offer intensive counselling and fears the repercussions on the neighbourhood and on the person himself, as well as on the privacy and safety of others and staff. The transition house also insists on what it calls the ‘exclusivity criterion for sexual offences’.
A new application, initiated by the management team of Hasselt prison ( 7 October 2024) was rejected on 18 November 2024 by the representative of the Minister of Justice ‘… estimant qu’il ne remplit pas la condition nécessaire, conformément à l’article 9/3, § 1er, 2° de la loi, de la capacité de séjourner dans un régime de communauté ouverte, compte tenu du risque d’évasion, de commission d’infractions pénales graves et de harcèlement des victimes’ (Action Plan 20 March 2025).
In the action plans of 11 October 2024 and 20 March 2025, the Belgian state describes these failed attempts to place Horion in a transition house, but fails to formulate a solution. In addition, the Belgian government dismisses the structural proposals of the Federal Institute for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights (FIRM) and the Central Supervisory Council for the Prison System (CTRG). In a joint communication of 22 August 2024 addressed to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, the FIRM and the CTRG had proposed to expand the powers of the sentence execution court so that it could also decide on the placement in a transition house or – in exceptional cases – a forensic psychiatric unit, or that it could deal with the appeal against a negative decision of the Minister of Justice regarding the placement in a transition house.
In the action plan of 11 October 2024, Belgium considers that such structural reforms are not necessary: in doing so, the Belgian state draws attention to the highly exceptional nature of the Horion case. The action plan of 20 March 2025 elaborates on this response: placement in a transition home was refused on 18 November 2024 because Horion did not meet the conditions provided for by law. The Belgian state argues that the sentence execution court would reach the same decision. Therefore, the proposed legislative amendment proposed by the FIRM and the CTRG does not provide a structural solution, but rather constitutes – according to the 20 March 2025 action plan – ‘une pure législation ad hoc’ .
Death
As a result both options proved to be dead ends and the dossier is in a deadlock. In the recent action plans, the Belgian government also refers to the Flemish government coalition agreement 2024-29 and the ‘Masterplan forensic care’ mentioned there, which ‘potentially’ could be an option ‘for the future’. But there is of course no ready-made solution there, and the Belgian state realises this too: ‘Ce n’est bien sûr qu’un accord du gouvernement mais l’accent mis sur l’accessibilité du circuit de soins médico-légaux pourrait à l’avenir potentiellement conduire à des options de soins résidentiels qui seraient également adaptées au dossier très spécifique de M. Horion’ (Action plans 3 and 11 October 2024 and 20 March 2025).
Meanwhile, the clock is ticking for the almost 78-year-old Horion. The Ghent sentence execution court is aware of this, as can b noted in its ruling of 13 March 2023: ‘The court does have an ear for the fact that the person concerned is now 76 years old and a 1-year dismissal period is not necessary’. Horion could therefore reapply after six months. But this obviously does not stop the natural ageing and deterioration process.
As the years go by and people spend so long behind bars, other avenues gradually come into view. Thus, the sentence execution judge may consider provisional release on medical grounds when a convicted person is in the terminal phase of an incurable disease or detention is incompatible with the state of health (art. 72 – 80 External Legal Status Act). However, such release – should it ever come up – would not comply with Article 3 of the ECHR: such forms of release (‘compassionate release’) must – as the ECtHR has pointed out on several occasions – be distinguished from early release aimed at reintegration (see, for example, Vinter et al. v. United Kingdom 2013, §127; Murray v. the Netherlands 2016, §100).
However, when all avenues lead to a dead end, then the hope of reintegration dwindles: in that case, early release with a view to palliative sedation becomes a realistic option. The fact that we are gradually getting into this situation is not only distressing for the person concerned, but it is also disastrous for Belgium’s standing on the international human rights stage. Freddy Horion does not seem to want to wait for that: he is now taking the flight forward. The latest action plan (20 March 2025) indicates that the lack of progress discourages him. He feels like a plaything in a legal battle that has been going on for years – he has been applying for sentencing modalities since 1993, and since 2018 the experts believe that he no longer belongs in a prison – which looks more and more like a cold smoke-out strategy. For Horion, enough is enough: he took control and applied for euthanasia.
Minister
With that euthanasia request, the Horion case takes a turn that reminds of the Frank Van den Bleeken’s case, which made the world press over a decade ago. Van den Bleeken’s request for proper care remained unanswered for many years and set the debate on edge: does the individual euthanasia decision become an alternative to social indifference and political unwillingness? Where is the line between a self-chosen death and a death penalty in disguise? Then-minster of justice Koen Geens was aware of the seriousness of the situation and visited Van den Bleeken in Turnhout prison in early 2015: a way out was eventually found, averting euthanasia.
In the Horion case, too, such an intervention seems to be become unavoidable. All instruments that are legally within reach of the Minister of Justice (short permit, penitentiary leave, placement in transition house) have so far remained unused. Above all, it is a missed opportunity that the avenue of the transition house has not been explored with more creativity and vigour in the past two years. Nothing prevents the current Minister of Justice from setting up a transition house as part of the further roll-out and differentiation of small-scale detention initiatives in Belgium (provided for in the federal government’s coalition agreement), with a focus on (very) long-term detainees, and to provide the necessary framework for this.
That the current transition houses feel ill-equipped to take on this mission is understandable: after all, they are private-commercial operators who have made concrete agreements with the government about their services. However, that does not alter the fact that the Belgian state can review and, if necessary, renegotiate that cooperation or set up a transition house under its own management, so that the legally defined mission can be fulfilled, namely guaranteeing supervision and support for long-term prisoners so that they can take further steps in their sentence execution trajectory and work towards reintegration, in accordance with Article 3 ECHR.
This post is translated and adapted from a Dutch-language article published in De Juristenkrant (“Met de dood op de hielen: twee jaar na arrest Straatsburg is impasse in zaak-Horion compleet”, De Juristenkrant, afl 508 (30 April), pp. 3-4) which has been made publicly available by the publisher through LinkedIn. The case received a lot of media attention (see here for a selection).
Tom Daems 