A man held since September over the death of an American woman inside a controversial suicide pod in Switzerland was released from custody on Monday, although he remains under suspicion.
The 64-year-old woman took her own life on September 23 inside a space-like Sarco capsule in a Swiss forest outside a village near the German border.
Several people were arrested at the scene, and all but one were quickly released.
The state prosecutor in the northern canton of Schaffhausen has not named the remaining suspect in custody.
However, The Last Resort, an aid-in-dying organization, recently said that association co-president Florian Willet – the only other person present at the death – was the man they are still holding.
The State Attorney’s Office announced in a press release that it initially initiated criminal proceedings for the criminal offense of inciting and assisting suicide, with strong suspicion of the criminal offense of murder with intent.
According to the German newspaper de Volkskrant, a forensic analyst said the woman’s body had serious injuries to the neck, and prosecutors suggested she may have been strangled. According to Newsweekthe Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung also reported that an unpublished autopsy “revealed signs of ‘strangulation’ on the woman’s neck.”
However, other reports suggested the marks on the neck were caused by a rare bone condition the woman had before her death. Although an autopsy is not yet available, officials are ruling out a direct homicide.
“Based on the latest status of the investigation, there is still strong suspicion of the crime of aiding and abetting and abetting suicide, but no longer intentional murder, even if the autopsy report… is not yet available,” it said.
“The State Attorney’s Office has therefore released the last detained person from custody,” the statement said, adding: “The presumption of innocence applies.”
How pods work: Nitrogen causes death by hypoxia
The Last Resort unveiled the Sarco floor in Zurich in July, saying they expect it to be in use for the first time in a few months.
The capsule fills with nitrogen and causes loss of consciousness and death from hypoxia within five minutes, according to the organization.
The human-sized portable capsule, which is autonomously controlled by a button inside, has raised a number of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades.
Swiss law generally allows assisted suicide if the person commits the fatal act themselves, and The Last Resort said it saw no legal obstacle to its use in the country.
However, on the same day the Sarco was used, Swiss Interior Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider told lawmakers the device was “not legal.”
The Last Resort said the person who died – who has not been named – was a 64-year-old woman from the Midwestern United States.
She had “suffered for many years from a number of serious problems associated with severe immune compromise,” the organization said.
Sarco was invented by Philip Nitschke, the world’s leading figure in right-to-die activism.
The 3D-printable capsule cost more than 650,000 euros ($680,000) to research and develop in the Netherlands over 12 years.
The organization said future reusable Sarco capsules could cost around 15,000 euros.
