Advocacy groups halt use of 'suicide capsule' as Swiss criminal probe continues

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Advocacy groups backing the so-called suicide capsule said on Sunday that they have halted the process of taking applications to use the capsule, which numbered over 370 applicants last month - as a criminal investigation into its first use in Switzerland is completed, AP reported.

Florian Willet, the president of Switzerland-based, The Last Resort is being kept in pretrial custody, according to the group of Exit International, an affiliate founded in Australia more than 25 years ago.

According to AP, the Swiss police arrested Willet and others following the death of an unidentified 64-year-old woman from the US Midwest, who became the first person to use the device named 'Sarco' on September 23 in a forest in the northern Schaffhausen region near the German border.

Other people who were earlier detained were released from custody, said authorities to AP.

Though the first use of the Sarco has led to heated debates among lawmakers, Switzerland is known to have some of the most permissive laws in the world when it comes to assisted suicide.

As per AP, Assisted suicide is legal in the rich Alpine country as long as the person committing suicide does not get "external assistance" and those assisting are not doing so for "any self-serving motive".

Exit International's founder Dr. Philip Nitschke based in the Netherlands, is behind the 3D-printed device that cost more than 1 million USD to develop.

The Sarco capsule is designed to let a person sitting in a reclining seat inside push a button that will inject nitrogen gas into the sealed chamber from a tank underneath, allowing the person to fall asleep and then die due to suffocation in a couple of minutes.

According to AP, Exit International claimed that Willet was the only person present at the woman's death, describing it as "peaceful, fast and dignified". Those claims could not be independently verified by AP.

On the same day as the woman died, Swiss Health Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider told parliament that the use of the Sarco is illegal. The woman was said to be suffering from severe immune compromise, AP reported.

Exit says its lawyers in Switzerland claim that the use of the device is legal.

"Only after the Sarco was used was it learned that Ms Baume-Schneider had addressed the issue," the advocacy groups said in the statement on Sunday. "The timing was a pure coincidence and not our intention."

(With inputs from AP)