Swiss police have arrested several people for having facilitated the first use of the “Suicide Capsule”, which caused the death by asphyxiation of a US citizen in the canton of Schaffhausen.
The Cantonal Police confirmed that the prosecutor has opened a criminal case against the detainees, accused of inciting and assisting suicide, while they have seized the capsule and transferred the body of the deceased to a mortuary.
The capsule, with a futuristic design and a transparent glass lid, has been called “Sarco” (short for sarcophagus) by its creator, the Australian pro-euthanasia activist Philip Nitschke.
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To use it, the person who wishes to die locks himself inside and presses a button that releases a large amount of nitrogen into the hermetically sealed chamber, causing loss of consciousness and death by suffocation in about five minutes. According to its inventor, death occurs without pain.
The ‘sarco’ capsule in an image released by its creators
The newspaper “Blick” claims that the first user of the capsule was a 64-year-old American citizen who for several years had suffered from acute health problems related to a severe immunodeficiency.
Switzerland allows assisted suicide, which it differentiates from euthanasia. For it to be legal, however, it is necessary that the person does not have “external assistance” and takes his or her own life, and that those who help him or her do not have any self-interest in it.
Sarco has been built by the organization The Last Resort, financed by private donations and assures that its objective is not to make money with the capsule. For this reason, he assures that he will only charge 20 euros for its use, which is what the liquid nitrogen used costs.
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Nitschke told the AP that lawyers for Exit International, the organization he runs to promote assisted suicide, had assured him that its use in Switzerland would be legal. However, according to “Blick”, the Schaffhausen prosecutor’s office already warned them in July that the capsule operators would face criminal proceedings with a sentence that could reach up to 5 years in prison.
Swiss Health Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider said in parliament on Monday that the capsule did not meet product safety criteria and could not be marketed, and that the use of nitrogen in a capsule was not compatible with the law on chemicals.
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