Session closed
The session concluded around 4.45 pm. The case will resume on Tuesday morning at 10.00 am. Tomorrow, victim statements are among the items on the agenda. You will be able to follow the trial again via EM.
3.50 pm: Risk of recurrence?
The anger over failing to obtain his degree is still present, which greatly concerns the experts. The rage appears undiminished, L. lacks a social support network, and all of this contributes to the risk of recurrence. “The level of planning he is capable of is also deeply worrying”, said one of the experts.
The experts recommend TBS with compulsory treatment. This treatment should begin as soon as possible. The judge finds this complicated, as it could affect the length of the prison sentence. Many people expect him to be imprisoned for a long time. What if L. serves 28 years in prison first and only then starts the treatment? “It’s about reducing the risk of reoffending stemming from his disorder. We know that early intervention is key. The sooner you begin compulsory treatment, the higher the chances of success”, the expert concluded.
Not once does L. turn to face the experts sitting directly behind him, even though the discussion is all about him.
3.30 pm: Desperation or disturbed?
The experts from the Pieter Baan Centrum considered declaring Fouad L. entirely unaccountable for his actions, they explained. Due to the mounting pressure in L.’s mind, the depersonalisation issues, the social difficulties, and his autism spectrum disorder combined with other factors, L. found himself trapped, according to the experts.
“This is no longer someone who can make 100 per cent rational decisions. We estimate his accountability to be reduced to 25 to 50 per cent.”
The judge pressed the experts: was it an act of desperation or the result of mental disturbance? No direct answer was given.
“It’s a matter of getting inside the defendant’s perspective”, one of the researchers said. “We ask ourselves: where did he take the wrong turn that landed him here, at the Pieter Baan Centrum? When he arrived, I thought: what do we do now? It seemed obvious that he was unaccountable for his actions. But through many intensive hours of evaluation, we saw him make decisions that made us question their logic. Why would those professors, those committee members, and others deliberately try to obstruct you?
“He cannot perceive the emotions he elicits in others. He cannot deal with those emotions. He ends up trapped, unable to find an adequate solution anymore.” Why L. resorted to violence, they could not determine. He became stuck in a rut, one so deep it resembled a chasm, the experts said, describing his state of mind.
3.00 pm: Concerns, but also high grades
It is a question being asked across the Netherlands, and also by the judges: how could it be that L. got on the verge of becoming a certified doctor? There were significant concerns during his studies, but also high grades, which confirmed he had the capabilities. For example, L. received a 9 in Radiology. When the experts from the Pieter Baan Centrum spoke, the judge posed this very question.
The expert replied: “There are situations in which people with Asperger’s can function very well, but in patient interactions, and thus in dealing with emotions like grief and fear, issues arise. He may be excellent at handling diagnoses, but patients are part of that process too. I believe that is where he goes completely wrong.”
Another expert from the Pieter Baan Centrum added: “Medical interns come and go, and by the time you notice where the problem lies, they’re already gone. If an intern is eager to learn and works hard, like L., it takes time before any issues become apparent. By the time he was exposed, he had already moved on.”
14.45: ‘Do you think you deserve punishment?’
The judge asks L. directly: “Do you think you deserve punishment?” L. assumes he will be punished, he says.
“I’m asking you: do you think you should?” the judge repeats. L. is silent for a moment before he responds: “That’s actually a very good question. People who murder others should be punished. So, I deserve punishment. But, and maybe this won’t make me popular: I think I should be punished, but I don’t feel guilty. It doesn’t feel like I chose this. As if I decided: I won’t become a doctor, so I’ll just go and murder three people.”
Becoming a doctor had been L.’s goal since his fifth birthday. The judge notes that this dream is unlikely to ever become reality. L. says he no longer looks to the future. “I was tortured to death by Erasmus MC and came back as some kind of Frankenstein’s monster.”
L. says it felt like a bucket filling up more and more. “Despite all the setbacks, gaslighting and opposition that made no sense”, he almost obtained his degree. Until a community police officer approached the examination board with concerns. According to L., that made the bucket overflow. At that point, he could no longer entirely suppress his dark fantasies.
14.30: ‘I handle emotions differently’
According to the court, the psychological report from the Pieter Baan Centre is ‘an unusually comprehensive report’. L. was not surprised about the content. He knew he had Asperger’s, which had also played a role in all the issues he encountered during his medical training. “You sometimes accidentally tell people the truth”, he says about his autism spectrum disorder. “I told lecturers or doctors that I didn’t find their work very important or interesting.”
According to L., that was the reason for his suspension. “Not for a week, but for years! Lecturers get very angry about such remarks. It only happened twice. When someone asks for my opinion, I wrongly assume they actually want to hear it. But what they really want is to hear their own opinion coming out of your mouth.”
The judge read in the case file that lecturers and doctors were concerned about whether L. would be suitable for patient contact. Absolute nonsense, says L. “I handle emotions differently. If someone is emotional, I tend to figure out why they are sad, try to solve it. I’m more focused on the solution than the emotion itself. I naturally approach emotions more functionally. I see that as a positive thing. Some people are very emotional; others are more analytical and solution-oriented.”
Doctors are also said to have claimed that L. lacks empathy. In response, he says: “That feedback was bullshit. I can prove that accusation doesn’t hold up in practice.”
The judge increasingly gets the impression that L. feels he was bullied out of the study programme and asks: “Who would benefit from getting you out of the programme?” L. responds: “That ENT doctor was just angry. With Asperger’s, you sometimes unintentionally rub people the wrong way.” He is referring to the ENT doctor who made a complaint about L. during his internship. After that, L. was suspended for two years. During that suspension, L. says he began fantasising about violence, because he was so furious.
Throughout the hearing, L. seems most interested in how the programme treated him, which he confirms when the judge asks how he views his own case file. “I find it much more interesting whether you, as an independent judge, think I was treated fairly.” The judge refuses to comment on that but again asks for L.’s opinion. “It’s not fair to tell me I should go do something else. Why can’t they just teach properly?”
13.45: Caring person
In the morning, L. described himself as a caring person. The Public Prosecution Service picks up on that. If he’s so caring, why didn’t he think about Marlous’s other children or the students in the classroom where he shot lecturer Jurgen Damen, the prosecutor asks.
“I did think about them”, says Fouad L. about the students in the classroom. “In the original plan, the intention was to not take their safety into account.” Was he not concerned about the consequences for those students? “No, I was just glad that measures were taken to ensure there would be no casualties among the students.”
If L. thought this would provide comfort to the present students, he is sorely mistaken. He touches a raw nerve. One of the students in the public gallery finds it too much to bear and temporarily leaves the room.
The judge presses on. What does L. think of the fact that people are still suffering? “I hope that if they exercise their right to speak, I’ll get a better understanding of that”, he says. The judge sharply responds: “You’ve read the file about how they experienced this. And you respond with a remark about the process?!”
It then becomes clear that L. requested the case file but hasn’t read those statements. He wanted to see if the CCTV footage was included in the file. The judge still needs to decide whether those recordings will be added. L. wants to see them in advance. “Otherwise, it’ll be quite shocking for me.”
13.30: ‘You’re trained as a doctor. I assume you know how to check if someone is still alive.’
The prosecutor and judges continue to press L. on certain points, to his irritation. Not for the first time, they ask whether the former medical student checked if Romy was still alive. The girl died of her injuries in hospital.
L. asks: “What do you mean?” The prosecutor responds: “You’re trained as a doctor. I assume you know how to check if someone is still alive.” The remark resonates with the audience, who seem to appreciate the sharp questioning.
The former medical student does not understand why they keep pressing this issue. He would rather focus on his chronological explanation. The judge clarifies.
Judge: “You take no responsibility at all. You describe facts, actions, but there’s no sense of accountability.”
L.: “That’s correct, because I don’t feel it.”
Judge: “You act as if you were powerless.”
L.: “I don’t feel like I had much choice.”
The prosecutor makes another attempt: “It’s striking that you sometimes take quite a while to answer seemingly straightforward questions. The judge already mentioned: it seems as if you’ve never really thought about it. What’s going on there?”
L.: “The plan wasn’t rationally put together. It also feels like it wasn’t my problem.”
The prosecutor asks whether ‘Partition’, the voice in his head that supposedly forced him to commit his crimes, isn’t just a ruse, since L. stated in a previous declaration that he didn’t want to or couldn’t take the blame. L. reacts sharply: “It’s not fair for you to quote a statement where I was criticising myself. I think that’s a bit underhanded.” The anger in the public gallery rises once again.
13.15: Prosecutor begins questioning
After the break, emotions are already running high among the relatives of Romy and Marlous. The public gallery holds its breath as the prosecutor opens by asking Fouad L.: did you realise it was a child who opened the door? “I saw a body”, he replies.
In his statement to the police, Fouad L. claimed he fired once at the girl. However, the investigation suggests he fired twice. Fouad L. speculates on how events unfolded: he shot Romy, went back home to set fire to his apartment, then returned to his neighbour’s house, where he shot the girl again, pursued the neighbour, and killed her. “The person who opened the door, they had to be… had to be killed. I can’t give a logical explanation.”
12.05: Break – much needed for those in the public gallery
The hearing is suspended until 13.15, 15 minutes longer than initially planned, as many attendees may need to go through security again.
Most people in the public gallery are well-prepared and have brought their own lunch. In the hallway outside the courtroom, words of comfort and encouragement are exchanged where possible. Hugs provide solace to others. That Fouad L. cannot explain why their loved ones were killed stings. He often went no further than ‘that was the plan’.
The nineteen lawyers representing victims and their families approach their clients to check on their well-being. The people describe their emotions, the crushing sense of powerlessness and the hope that the perpetrator will be held accountable for all the pain and fear he caused.
11.30: 'I feel very positive about myself. I prevented a bloodbath'
Immediately after it became clear he would not receive his medical diploma, a plan began to form in Fouad L.’s mind, he says. He describes how he could no longer contain his anger over the medical programme. He says he debated the plan with himself, describing it as an ‘internal conflict’. Initially, his plan was to kill everyone who had ‘once looked at him the wrong way’.
“I had an internal conflict”, he says. “What is the minimum I need to do to get out of this? It was a negotiation with myself in my head. Something had to happen. That may sound strange. Killing people isn’t right …”
The judges press him on his reflections about the plan, buying the guns, deciding who to spare, shooting his 14-year-old neighbour Romy, his 39-year-old neighbour Marlous, and 43-year-old lecturer Jurgen Damen. The shock in the public gallery is palpable when Fouad L. says Romy’s death ‘has no meaning’. He cannot explain why he fired twice at her, while other victims were shot more times. He claims not to recall stepping over the girl’s body to enter the house. “It feels like it happened on TV”, he says.
Some attendees are visibly overwhelmed when Fouad L. states, “I feel very positive about myself. I prevented a bloodbath”, referring to the ‘worse’ plan he initially conceived.
11.00: 'I could have been a great doctor'
Fouad L. is still deeply resentful over the suspensions and what he perceives as unfairly negative assessments of his suitability to be a doctor. According to the judge, he had promised the programme to work on his communication skills and even consider leaving the course.
Regarding his two-year suspension, he says: “What they’re really saying is: leave! They even literally said to me once: maybe you should do a different study.”
Judge: “You said you would consider that.”
Fouad L.: “That was just politeness.”
He explains that as a medical student, you are expected to respond politely and agreeably, which is what he did, no matter how unfair it felt. “If I had just been able to graduate in 2017, none of this would have happened. This point is very important to me”, he says.
Fouad L. expresses no remorse or regret. “I also feel a considerable distance from what happened. That might sound odd. I know I’m guilty of what happened, but I don’t feel guilty for what happened. That’s just how I feel”, he says.
When the judge remarks that she does not find the decision by the examination board to withhold his diploma ‘incomprehensible’, L. reacts indignantly. “Sorry? I think that’s a bit unfair to say because I’m convinced I could have been a great doctor. Everything just went terribly wrong.”
Fouad L. described the fire in the Education Centre as part of his internal negotiations over his plan. “The idea behind it was that I needed to do this so that the examination board wouldn’t be harmed. It was never my intention to harm the examination board. I even quite like the chairperson.”
So why was there still a fatality at Erasmus MC, the judge wants to know.
“There had to be at least one death at Erasmus MC. That was the decision”, L. says.
“How so?”, asks the judge, not for the first or last time. “Was it drawing straws?”
L.: “It could have gone in many ways, but this was simply the decision that was made.”
10.15: Review of facts with Fouad L.
After outlining the charges against him, the former medical student takes the floor. He has prepared a detailed chronological account of his life, which he wishes to read out, but the judge prefers a dialogue. L. shares that he wanted to be a doctor from the age of five, describing it as a goal that earned him positive feedback.
“Was it a passion or an obsession?”, the judge asks about his dream of becoming a doctor. “An obsession”, Fouad replies immediately. “It went much further than an obsession.”
10.05: Trial begins
“We are here to discuss the events of 28 September 2023 at Heiman Dullaertplein. Horrific events took place there”, begins the judge. “Horrific events also occurred at Erasmus Medical Centre. These events have had a profound and lasting impact on many people’s lives. The court is aware of this.”
Relatives and victims are warned that they may hear new and potentially distressing information. If it becomes too overwhelming, they are allowed to leave the room and return later. Tension is palpable in the public gallery. The moment has arrived: the substantive hearing against Fouad L. begins.
9.00: Queues in front of court
As expected, it is busy outside the Rotterdam District Court. Many relatives and victims, as well as a significant number of journalists and courtroom sketch artists, are waiting in line for the security checks. The judge had previously stated that anyone wishing to attend needed to arrive on time. The first substantive hearing begins promptly at 9.30 am.