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The black plastic bin liners were bulging and cluttered the back stairs to the office of Ludwig Minelli, founder and head of the assisted suicide organisation Dignitas. Soraya Wernli was new to the job as a 'companion', one of those hired by Minelli, 75, to assist people in their final journey to the 'other side'. Paperwork, words of comfort, a gentle hand for those about to end their pain-filled lives - these were some of the things the former district nurse knew she was signing up for when she agreed to work for him. 'But then, just a few days...

Dignitas, which is meant to be a non-profit organisation, is being forced to open its accounts to prosecutors in Switzerland and disclose how much money it is receiving from its controversial business of assisting suicide. The founder of the group is reported to have become a millionaire by helping at least 870 terminally ill people – an estimated 100 of whom were British – die. It is said to have taken as much as £61,000 from one woman, 10 times its usual fee. Swiss law allows Dignitas to provide patients with a dose of barbiturate and a room in which...

Helping someone to commit suicide is a matter of conscience, the Prime Minister said today. Gordon Brown condemned the idea of new laws to allow assisted suicide - but he did nothing to stop it in the wake of a landmark test case decision that paved the way for more deaths in the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland. His response in the Commons to the outcry over the televised suicide of motor neurone disease sufferer Craig Ewert appealed instead for compassion for families agonising over the suffering of a loved one. The end: The moment motor neurone sufferer Craig Ewert, 59,...

London, England (LifeNews.com) -- A national controversy in Britain has been sparked by news that a British television show will reveal footage of 59-year-old Craig Ewert taking his life at a euthanasia clinic in Switzerland. Meanwhile, Ewert's family will escape any charges in connection with his death despite the UK's law against assisted suicide. Ewert had motor neurone disease, known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's syndrome in the United States. The footage shows him putting his ventilator on a timer, taking a lethal cocktail and dying minutes later. Ewert's suicide at the Dignitas clinic was filmed for a documentary called...

MORE than 30 Britons have written statements confessing to helping friends or relatives to die at a Swiss euthanasia clinic as part of a test case to change the law. Details of the admissions will be submitted to the director of public prosecutions (DPP) as part of a legal challenge by a woman suffering from a progressive form of multiple sclerosis. She wants her husband to be allowed to accompany her to the Dignitas clinic in Zurich without the threat of prosecution and is seeking a statement from the DPP clarifying the law. Debbie Purdy, 44, from Bradford, says that...

Death on wheels: The suicide service that comes to your doorBy ALLAN HALL - More by this author » Last updated at 23:29pm on 8th November 2007 British client: Reg Crew, pictured with his wife Win, died in 2003 The controversial group which assists its clients to commit suicide has launched a service which has been nicknamed "death on wheels".  Dignitas has formed mobile teams which meet those who want to kill themselves at the location of their choice.  An official and a nurse then hand the client a lethal dose of chemicals which is taken intravenously or orally. They...

Czech Parliament Unlikely to Legalize Euthanasia By Hilary White PRAGUE, August 23, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Czech Chamber of Deputies, the equivalent of the House of Commons, are unlikely to pass a measure that would legalize physician-assisted suicide (PAS). Of 186 deputies from the 200-seat Chamber, 92 said they did not want physician-assisted suicide to become legal with sixty deputies supporting legalization and 34 undecided. The daily paper, Mladá fronta Dnes, reported in July that the highest support for euthanasia (70 percent) is among the followers of the rightist Civic Democrats (ODS) of Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek. ODS Deputy, Boris...

ZURICH, Switzerland, July 17, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Swiss assisted-suicide group Dignitas has been evicted from its operation site in a suburban area due to growing complaints from neighbors.For nine years the assisted-suicide clinic at Gertrudstrasse 84 received people who wanted to kill themselves, Spiegel News reports. The organization took up two apartments of the apartment block; but recently the owner cancelled their lease because residents were horrified by the stream of body bags that were carried out on the elevator and are frustrated by the police and ambulances that constantly come to the door. The landlady has given Dignitas...

Prosecutors are calling for tougher regulations on Switzerland's assisted suicide clinics after uncovering evidence that some of the foreign clients they help to die are simply depressed rather than suffering incurable pain. The clinics, which attract hundreds of foreigners, including Britons, every year, have been accused of failing to carry out proper investigations into whether patients meet the requirements of Switzerland's right-to-die laws. In some cases, foreign clients are being given drugs to commit suicide within hours of their arrival, which critics say leaves doctors and psychologists unable to conduct a detailed assessment or to provide appropriate counselling. Andreas Brunner,...

MUNICH, February 12, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A Swiss Euthanasia group which runs a centre in Zurich which boasts of having killed - or as they put it, facilitated "assisted suicides" - of 700 people since 1998, has taken out a full-page ad in a German newspaper slamming Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II. The attack comes as no surprise to opponents of euthanasia who suggest that anti-Catholicism is rife within the ranks of euthanasia advocates. The ad by Dignitas appeared in the weekend edition of Munich's Sueddeutsche Zeitung, accusing the Popes of responsibility for the deaths of millions...

The founder of Dignitas – a Zurich, Switzerland, clinic that assists those with illnesses end their lives – says he wants to open a chain of "suicide clinics" in other countries to give everyone, including the mentally ill, the "the choice of a choice." Ludwig Minelli Ludwig Minelli, a Swiss lawyer, told the London Sunday Times he has already opened an associated Dignitas office in Germany and he intends to lift the "taboo" against suicide by lobbying other countries to set up clinics to offer information on effective methods of suicide and to alert people to the risks of...