The head of the Swiss right-to-die organisation Dignitas chose to end his life through an assisted death, the group has said.<\/p>\n
Ludwig Minelli, who founded the group in 1998, died on Saturday, days before his 93rd birthday, Dignitas said.<\/p>\n
Dignitas said it would \u201ccontinue to manage and develop the association in the spirit of its founder as a professional and combative international organisation for self-determination and freedom of choice in life and at the end of life\u201d.<\/p>\n
Minelli, a lawyer by trade, faced many legal challenges and made several successful appeals to the Swiss supreme court and the European court of human rights (ECHR).<\/p>\n
Dignitas said his work had had a lasting influence on Swiss law, pointing to a 2011 ECHR ruling that recognised the right of a person to decide the manner and time of their own end of life.<\/p>\n
Swiss law does not allow for euthanasia, where a doctor or other person administers a lethal injection, for example. But assisted dying \u2013 when a person who articulates a wish to die commits the lethal act themselves \u2013 has been legal for decades.<\/p>\n
Unlike some similar organisations in Switzerland<\/a>, Dignitas, which says it has more than 10,000 members, also offers its services to people living outside the country.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to This is Europe<\/p>\n The most pressing stories and debates for Europeans \u2013 from identity to economics to the environment<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans<\/a> can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org<\/a> or jo@samaritans.ie<\/a>. In the US, you can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline<\/a> at 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org<\/a>. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline<\/a> is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The head of the Swiss right-to-die organisation Dignitas chose to end his life through an assisted death, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":603585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-603584","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115639379931339346","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}