Court sends man who spent 41 years in US jail back to prison

An 81-year-old Dutch man who spent 42 years in a US jail for ordering the murder of his wife and stepdaughter will have to serve the rest of his life sentence in the Netherlands despite being seriously ill.

Jaitsen Singh was repatriated in April after his lawyers petitioned the district court in The Hague to force the government to request a transfer. He has acute leukaemia and is in poor health.

He was convicted in 1986 by a court in California of arranging the two murders, but has always denied any involvement in the crime.

The key witness against him was later found to have been bribed by a prosecutor who was removed from the case. A case review led to a retrial in 2000, when a second jury found him guilty of both crimes.

On Tuesday the district court in Amsterdam rejected an appeal by his lawyers to release him immediately on health grounds.

The court ruled that a life sentence in the Netherlands was equivalent to the term of 56 years to life that Singh was ordered to serve in California. But it also said he had other opportunities to apply for his release, such as via a case review.

Under Dutch life sentencing rules, prisoners can have their sentence reviewed after 25 years and become eligible for a pardon after 28 years.

Political pressure

Singh’s lawyer, Rachel Imamkhan, argued that a Dutch life sentence was heavier than the jail term imposed by the Californian court because of the opportunities for parole. Singh has had three requests for elderly parole turned down since 2015 and would have been eligible to apply again this year.

That would breach the terms of the WOTS treaty, which covers the repatriation of Dutch citizens serving prison terms overseas, which says a prisoner cannot be given a more severe punishment on their return.

Singh’s case has been the subject of Dutch political and legal pressure for more than a decade. An earlier attempt to transfer him to the Netherlands was rejected in 2021 on the grounds that he had insufficient ties to the country.

He was born in Suriname and only spent a few years in the Netherlands before moving to California in 1971. But the court of appeal ruled last August that he was a Dutch citizen and should be repatriated to the Netherlands.