A judge on Monday moved to indict
Radical Party member and right-to-die activist Marco Cappato for
helping blind and tetraplegic ex-disc jockey Fabiano Antoniani
aka DJ Fabo commit assisted suicide in Switzerland earlier this
year.
The preliminary hearings judge accused Cappato of not only
meeting DJ Fabo's wishes but of "reinforcing" them.
Prosecutors will now have to request his indictment.
Cappato reacted by thanking the preliminary investigations
judge for rejecting the prosecutors' call to shelve the case,
saying "the trial will be a chance to put on trial a mistaken
law from the Fascist era".
Cappato reported himself on February 28 for helping 2014 car
crash victim Fabo, 39, kill himself in Zurich's Dignitas clinic
on February 27.
Assisted suicide and euthanasia are illegal in Italy.
Cappato, a leading member of the Coscioni right-to-die
association, has said that he hopes to face a trial.
"I hope to be charged and to be able to defend myself at a
trial," he said.
"In Italy there is the crime of instigation to suicide, but
in this case there was no instigation".
The case has highlighted parliament's failure to legislate on
end-of-life issues and give people the ability to make out
living wills.
On May 2 Milan prosecutors requested Cappato's acquittal
saying assisted suicide does not violate the right to life.
The Milan prosecutors' request for the Radical Party member
is based on the contention that assisted suicide does not breach
the right to life "in the case of terminal illness or serious
suffering, unbearable for the patient".
Cappato helped DJ Fabo exercise his right to "human dignity"
in accompanying him to the Dignitas Clinic in Zurich, the
prosecutors said.
But the preliminary investigations judge on Monday turned
down the acquittal request for Cappato, who is facing a possible
12 years in jail for breaking Italian law forbidding assisted
suicide.
This is one of several cases involving Cappato and others.
On April 19 prosecutors in the Tuscan coastal town of Massa
placed right-to-die activists Mina Welby and Cappato under
investigation for helping multiple-sclerosis (MS) sufferer
Davide Trentini commit assisted suicide in Switzerland.
The move was automatic, as was the Milan prosecutors' probe,
after Welby and Cappato reported themselves to police after
helping Trentini kill 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".
Many Italians including the headline-grabbing DJ Fabo, who
lost his will to live after the road accident, have been helped
to commit euthanasia by the campaigning Luca Coscioni
Association, and especially its treasurer Cappato.
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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