The offices of Sarco suicide capsule inventor Dr. Philip Nitschke have been raided by police in the Netherlands, local media report, days after an American woman became the first person to end her life in the capsule.
In a joint operation with Swiss authorities, Dutch police reportedly searched the premises of euthanasia organization Exit International in Haarlem on Monday, seizing computers and a prototype of the Sarco.
A completed version of the device was used last week in the death of a 64-year-old mother of two 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 being questioned on suspicion of abetting suicide, police said, as they continue to investigate whether other crimes were committed.
The controversial advocate Nitschke, who often calls Dr. Death is mentioned was not present at the death, but had watched it via a video link to a camera in the pod. It is unclear whether he could be extradited to face charges.
Philip Nitschke enters a suicide capsule known in Rotterdam, Netherlands, July 8, 2024
The Sarco pod at the location where it was said to have been used by a 64-year-old American woman
The Sarco pod was located in a remote forest in Merishausen, Switzerland
The Sarco is designed so that the person inside can press a button that injects nitrogen gas into the sealed chamber. The person is then believed to fall asleep and die of suffocation within a few minutes.
Nitschke said afterwards that the death went “well” and “looked exactly as we expected.”
“I estimated that she lost consciousness within two minutes and died after five minutes,” he told de Volksrant.
“We saw some jerky muscle movements, but she was probably already unconscious.”
Assisted dying is allowed in Switzerland, provided there is no ‘external assistance’ and those who help them die do not do so out of ‘any self-interest’.
The woman who used the device reportedly suffered from “a very serious illness involving severe pain” and had wanted to die for “at least two years,” with Nitschke saying she pressed it “immediately” after taking the capsule entered.
After being informed of her death, police rushed into the forest, where they discovered the woman’s lifeless body in the capsule and arrested several people.
Exit International is a non-profit organization that fights for the right to die. The organization was founded by Nitschke in 1997 and claims to have approximately 30,000 members.
Nitschke wrote on
The Australian-born former GP previously helped four terminally ill patients end their lives in his home country before the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act was overturned in 1997, prompting him to found Exit International.
He and his wife, fellow assisted dying advocate Fiona Stewart, now live in the Netherlands, where the Sarco was made using a 3D printer for Swiss assisted dying organization The Last Resort.
The pod’s futuristic design is intended to resemble that of a spacecraft, to give those inside the spaceship the feeling that they are traveling to the “great beyond.”
The 3D-printable capsule, tested in a workshop in Rotterdam, cost more than 650,000 euros ($725,000) to research and develop in the Netherlands over twelve 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 that gives people autonomy over their deaths.
Nitschke and Stewart intended 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 appropriate people on a regular basis.’
She said at the time that the Sarco launch would happen soon and that they expected an investigation.
A rendering of the Sarco suicide machine, a 3D printed capsule that gives the user ultimate control over the time of his/her death
“Let’s hope that the investigation, the investigation, after it has just been used, goes well, and that the public prosecutor of the relevant canton sees Sarco’s wisdom as another choice available to foreigners in Switzerland,” she said .
The public prosecutor in Schaffhausen, the canton where the device was used, said on Monday that the makers of Sarco had been warned not to use it in the region, but that the warning had not been heeded.
“We have warned them in writing,” prosecutor Peter Sticher told Swiss media. “We said if they came to Schaffhausen and used Sarco, they would face criminal consequences.”
Nitschke and Stewart expressed shock at the Swiss Justice Ministry’s response but said they were confident they would not be prosecuted, according to their lawyer Tim Vis.
He told Dutch media: “They have always ensured that their actions were within the law, and they have done so in this case.”