This Tuesday, Milan Prosecutors stated that assisted suicide does not violate the right to life.
They did this as reaction to the request for acquittal for Marco Cappato. Cappato, a former politician and right-to-die activist, helped DJ Fabo realise his last travel to Dignitas in Switzerland to get assisted suicide there.
The Milan prosecutors stated that assisted suicide does not breach the right to life ‘in the case of terminal illness or serious suffering, unbearable for the patient’. Cappato helped DJ Fabo exercise his right to ‘human dignity’, by accompanying him to Switzerland. They intend it to be jurisprudence to treat the right to live with dignity as a synonym for human dignity.
The Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office requests archiving, after they investigated Cappato’s role in the assisted suicide of DJ Fabo. Cappato is facing imprisonment in Italy. The act of offering assistance with suicide can lead to a maximum of 12-year imprisonment. The request has now to be weighed by a judge. “If the judge will follow the same motivation, it would mean a turning point” states Cappato.
The full motivations given by the Prosecutors is not available yet. But it appears to be a step forward in the realisation of the right to die in Italy.
UPDATE: The investigating judge is setting up a hearing to hear the parties involved, on the 6th of July. Cappato said he respected the judge’s ruling but added: “with the Luca Coscioni Association we will got forward in fighting for life, for the rights of the sick and disabled, and therefore for respecting the choice of stopping unbearable suffering”.