Four people have been arrested in Switzerland following the death of a 64-year-old American woman in a so-called “suicide capsule” in the northern municipality of Merishausen last Monday (23).
According to information from the Reuters agency, the police of the canton (Swiss administrative division) of Schaffhausen reported that the public prosecutor’s office opened criminal proceedings against several people for “inducing, aiding and abetting suicide”.
The Last Resort group, which brought the capsule to the woman to take her own life, claimed she had a “severely compromised” immune system. The so-called Sarco capsule was used for the first time in this incident.
The four arrested are Florian Willet, co-president of The Last Resort, a Dutch journalist and two Swiss nationals. Willet was the only other person present when the American woman took her own life, said a spokeswoman for The Last Resort, which said the woman had undergone psychiatric evaluations before the procedure.
Assisted suicide is permitted in Switzerland, provided that the act that directly causes death is carried out only by the person who wishes to die.
Sarco leads to death when its occupant presses a button to release nitrogen inside, reducing the amount of oxygen to lethal levels, and its use has been discussed in Swiss society and the press.
According to information from the Keystone-SDA agency, the country’s Health Minister, Elisabeth Baume-Schneider, told the Chamber of Deputies this week that the capsule does not meet the requirements of product safety legislation and that the use of nitrogen in the device is not compatible with the law on chemicals.
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