US woman dies in controversial suicide capsule in Switzerland

Geneva: A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested.

The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border.

The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country but assisted dying has been legal for decades.

On the same day it was used, Switzerland's Interior Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider told lawmakers that the Sarco was "not legal".

Police in the northern Schaffhausen canton said several people had been taken into custody and face criminal proceedings.

'Peaceful, fast, dignified'

The Last Resort, an assisted dying organisation, presented the Sarco pod in Zurich in July, saying they expected it to be used for the first time within months, and saw no legal obstacle to its use in Switzerland.

In a statement to AFP, The Last Resort said the person who died, who was not named, was a 64-year-old woman from the midwestern United States.

She "had been suffering for many years from a number of serious problems associated with severe immune compromise", the statement said.

The death took place "under a canopy of trees, at a private forest retreat".

The association's co-president Florian Willet was the only other person present, and described the woman's death as "peaceful, fast and dignified", according to the statement.

Warning given

The cantonal public prosecutor's office "has opened criminal proceedings against several people for inducement and aiding and abetting suicide... and several people have been placed in police custody," a police statement said.

The public prosecutor's office had been informed by a law firm on Monday that an assisted suicide had taken place at a forest hut in Merishausen.

The police, the forensic emergency service and the public prosecutor's office "went to the crime scene".

The Sarco suicide capsule was secured and the deceased taken away for an autopsy.

"We found the capsule with the lifeless person inside," said Schaffhausen's public prosecutor Peter Sticher.

He told Blick newspaper that several people were arrested "so that they were not colluding with each other or covering up evidence".

Sticher said the operators knew the risks of being arrested.

"We warned them in writing. We said that if they came to Schaffhausen and used Sarco, they would face criminal consequences," he said.