Court allows father to let daughter die

Milan: An Italian court accepted yesterday a man's appeal to remove his daughter's feeding tube, which has kept her alive for 16 years.

Eluana Englaro has been in a vegetative state and receiving food and water artificially at a hospital in the northern Italian town of Lecco since a 1992 car crash. Her father has been seeking an end to the life support for nearly 10 years.

The Milan appeals court said it had been proven 37-year-old Englaro's coma was irreversible and that before the accident she had stated her preference to die.

"I feel that I can now free the most splendid creature I have ever known," Beppino Englaro, Eluana's father, said.

"She simply wanted to be left to die, [she wanted] nature to take its course."

Euthanasia is highly emotive in Italy and is strongly opposed by the Vatican.

The Catholic Church refused a religious burial for Piergiorgio Welby, a man who campaigned for euthanasia as he lay paralysed with muscular dystrophy.