The offices of Sarco suicide pod inventor Dr Philip Nitschke have been raided by police in the Netherlands, local media reports, days after an American woman became the first person to end her life in the capsule.
In a joint operation with Swiss authorities, Dutch cops reportedly searched the premises of euthanasia organisation Exit International in Haarlem on Monday, confiscating computers and a prototype of the Sarco.
A finished version of the device was used in the death of a 64-year-old mother-of-two last week in a forest in Schaffhausen, northern Switzerland.
Nitschke’s associate Dr Florian Willet, the co-president of Swiss Sarco operator The Last Resort, was among several people arrested at the scene.
They were questioned on suspicion of aiding and abetting suicide, police said, as they continue to investigate whether any other offences have been committed.
Controversial assisted dying advocate Nitschke, who is often dubbed Dr Death, had not been present at the death but had watched it via video link to a camera inside the pod. It is unclear whether he could be extradited to face charges.
Philip Nitschke enters a suicide pod known in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, July 8, 2024
The Sarco pod at the location where it was allegedly used by a 64-year-old American woman
The Sarco pod was located in remote woodland in Merishausen, Switzerland
The Sarco is designed to allow the person inside to push a button that injects nitrogen gas into the sealed chamber. The person is then supposed to fall asleep and die by suffocation in a few minutes.
Nitschke said afterwards that the death went ‘well’ and ‘looked exactly as we had expected.’
‘I estimated that she lost consciousness within two minutes and died after five minutes,’ he told the Volksrant newspaper.
‘We saw some twitchy movements of the muscles but she was likely already unconscious.’
Assisted dying is permitted in Switzerland provided there is no ‘external assistance’ and those who help them to die do not do so for ‘any self-serving motive’.
The woman who used the device had reportedly been suffering with ‘a very serious illness that involves severe pain’ and had wished to die for ‘at least two years’, with Nitschke saying she had pressed it ‘immediately’ after entering the pod.
After being notified of her death, police swooped on the forest, where they discovered the woman’s lifeless body inside the pod and arrested several people.
Exit International is a non-profit which campaigns for the right to die. It was founded by Nitschke in 1997 and claims to have around 30,000 members.
Writing on X after reports of the raid on his offices emerged, Nitschke said: ‘Police raid Haarlem office of suicide pod inventor after Switzerland incident… no further comment needed!!’
The Australian-born former GP previously helped four terminally ill patients to end their lives in his home country before the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act was overturned in 1997, prompting him to set up Exit International.
He and his wife, fellow assisted dying advocate Fiona Stewart, now live in the Netherlands, where the Sarco was created using a 3D printer for Swiss assisted dying organisation The Last Resort.
The pod’s futuristic design is intended to resemble that of a spacecraft in order to give those inside the feeling they are travelling to the ‘great beyond’.
Tested in a workshop in Rotterdam, the 3D-printable capsule cost more than 650,000 euros ($725,000) to research and develop in the Netherlands over 12 years. Future Sarcos could cost around 15,000 euros.
The Last Resort and its partners Exit International, run by Nitschke, promote Sarco as a free-to-use device which gives people autonomy over their death.
Nitschke and Stewart planned for the Sarco to become an established and accessible option for euthanasia.
Speaking to MailOnline earlier this month, she said: ‘Our hope would be to make it available to suitable people on a regular basis.’
She said at the time the time that the launch of the Sarco would happen soon and that they anticipated an investigation.
A view of the Sarco suicide machine, a 3D-printed capsule that gives the user the ultimate control over the timing of her/his death
‘Let’s just hope that the inquiry, the investigation, after it’s just used, goes well, and the public prosecutor of the relevant Canton sees the wisdom in Sarco being just another choice that is available to foreigners in Switzerland,’ she said.
The public prosecutor in Schaffhausen, the canton where the device was used on Monday, said that Sarco’s creators had been warned not to operate it in the region, but that the warning had not been heeded.
‘We warned them in writing,’ prosecutor Peter Sticher told Swiss media. ‘We said that if they came to Schaffhausen and used Sarco, they would face criminal consequences.’
Nitschke and Stewart have expressed shock at the reaction of the Swiss justice department but said they were confident they would not be prosecuted, according to their lawyer Tim Vis.
He told Dutch media: ‘They have always made sure their actions are within the law, and they did so in this case.’
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