Judge moves against Cappato for DJ Fabo (6)

(ANSA) - Milan, July 10 - 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.