Suicide advocates boast over apparent use of Sarco suicide capsule on US citizen in Switzerland

Multiple people have been arrested in Switzerland in connection to the seemingly willing use of a “suicide capsule.” 

Police officials of Schaffhausen canton in northern Switzerland announced on Tuesday that multiple people have been detained following a tip indicating individuals were helped to kill themselves in a cabin in Merishausen. 

An investigation into possible incitement and accessory to suicide is underway, and the premeditated death could be attributed to the first-ever use of a Sarco-brand suicide capsule.

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The Sarco pod is a suicide machine developed by Netherlands-based pro-euthanasia group Exit International.

The group seemed to take responsibility for the alleged crime in a statement, announcing the willful euthanization of an elderly woman who is a U.S. citizen and suffering from an intense immune disease.

“In Switzerland on Monday, a 64-year-old woman died in a specially designed ‘suicide capsule’ containing nitrogen gas. It is the first time ever that this suicide capsule, called the Sarco, was used,” Exit International boasted in an online press release. “The capsule, an airtight cabin the size of a coffin, offers, according to its creators, a ‘quick, peaceful and reliable death’ without the assistance of a doctor or medication.”

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“It is still unclear how Swiss justice will react to this,” the pro-suicide group’s statement continued. “The conditions set by the country are that the person with the death wish is mentally competent, that they carry out the final deadly act themselves and that the people who help have altruistic motives.”

Exit International founder Dr. Philip Nitschke announced Tuesday that he was “pleased that the Sarco had performed exactly as it had been designed […] to provide an elective, non-drug, peaceful death at the time of the person’s choosing.”

Exit International said Nitschke personally “confirmed” the U.S. woman’s death.

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Australian activist Philip Nitschke addresses a press conference of The Last Resort to present the Sarco suicide capsule in Zurich. The device, called “Sarco” for sarcophagus, is designed to enable people to take their own lives by pressing a button inside the capsule, which is supposed to release nitrogen. (ARND WIEGMANN/AFP via Getty Images)

Switzerland was the first country in the world to legalize assisted dying, legislating the accomodation in 1941. 

Swiss law allows patients to be accommodated while killing themselves only if they do so without “external assistance” and are not aided by individuals with a “self-serving motive.”

The Sarco capsule is designed to fill itself with Nitrogen gas, putting victims to sleep before suffocating them within 10 minutes of activation.

It is 3-D printed and was first unveiled at the Venice Design Festival in 2019.