Swiss right-to-die group to expand into Germany*

Reuters
Saturday, November 17, 2007; 1:10 PM

ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss right-to-die group Dignitas wants to set up an
organization in Germany to carry out assisted suicides there, Dignitas
head Ludwig Minelli was quoted as saying on Saturday.

Minelli told Swiss newspaper Landbote that his organization had found
someone in Germany who was ready to risk prosecution to offer seriously
ill people a chance to get assisted suicides at home rather than having
to travel across the border to Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal.

"It is not right that Germany forces its seriously ill patients to leave
their beds instead of us being able to come to them," Minelli said in an
interview.

"In the case of suicide it is about a human right," he said.

He said Dignitas was prepared to take the case to the German Federal
Court of Justice.

Dignitas, which has been using hotel rooms for the assisted suicides
after being barred from a number of flats in Zurich, has come under fire
recently after some clients died in their cars.

Minelli said using cars for suicides was not the organization's idea.

"The two Germans said to my colleagues that they would prefer to die in
their own car rather than in a strange hotel," Minelli said.

Assisted suicide has been allowed in Switzerland since the 1940s.
Non-physicians can participate in assisted suicide but euthanasia is not
legal.

The laws, some of the most liberal in the world, have led in recent
years to "suicide tourism," where terminally ill foreigners travel to
Switzerland to die.

In 2006, Dignitas helped 195 people to die and 57 percent of those were
German, Minelli said.