Prosecutors in the Tuscan coastal
town of Massa on Wednesday placed right-to-die activists Mina
Welby and Marco Cappato under investigation for helping
multiple-sclerosis (MS) sufferer Davide Trentini commit assisted
suicide in Switzerland last week.
The move was automatic after Welby and Cappato reported
themselves to police after helping Trentini kills himself on
April 14.
Trentini voiced the hope in a farewell letter that Italy
would become a "civilised" country where euthanasia would be
possible.
"I really hope that Italy becomes a more civilised country,
finally passing a law that lets people end enormous suffering,
without end, without remedy, in their own homes, close to their
loved ones, without having to go abroad, with all the
difficulties involved without excessive expenditure," wrote the
53-year-old Tuscan, who was accompanied to the Dignitas clinic
in Zurich by Welby with Cappato's support.
"I will leave for my dream holiday", wrote Trentini.
The scientific head of Exit Italia, of which Trentini was a
member, Silvio Vitale, said: "I don't hesitate to express
our satisfaction that Davide Trentini, one of our members, was
able to legally die in Switzerland.
"There remains the anger that he could not do so in Italy
among his friends".
Vitale said "I, like many other doctors, "am ready to do as
my colleagues in Switzerland, Netherlands and Belgium do, and I
hope that day is not far off.
Vitale added: "A thank you to Mina Welby who accompanied
him, challenging the hypocrisy of Italian law".
Trentini, committed assisted suicide on Thursday.
Many Italians including the headline-grabbing blind and
tetraplegic disc jockey DJ Fabo have been helped to commit
euthanasia by the campaigning Luca Coscioni Association, and
especially its treasurer Cappato.
Welby, the co-chair of the association, on Friday reported
herself to Carabinieri police for assisting a suicide,
which is a crime in Italy.
She was accompanied by Cappato, who said another person was
waiting to go to Swizterland this week.
Welby and Cappato were in the Carabinieri's office for over
an hour, after which it emerged that it had been Trentini's
mother who asked them for help back in August.
Welby said the trip to Zurich had been an "ordeal" and that
Trentini had been "in great pain".
The Coscioni Association has helped 268 people to die and has
accompanied three to the Swiss Dignitas clinic, most taken there
by Cappato.
MS is a debilitating nerve-wasting disease. Trentini had been
suffering from it for 26 years, since 1993, and had found his
recent years unbearable, sources said.
Welby is the widow of Piergiorgio Welby, an Italian poet,
painter and activist whose three-month-long battle to establish
his right to die in 2006 led to a debate about euthanasia in
Italy, rekindled by DJ Fabo's and other Swiss suicides.
A bill on end-of-life issues including living wills, but not
euthanasia, is before parliament amid criticism from the
Catholic Church and conservative politicians.
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