The founder of Swiss suicide facility Dignitas has been accused of profiteering from patients and exploiting their suffering for his own benefit, it was reported on 22 May.
Ludwig Minelli is on trial over charges that he profited from three cases of assisted suicide between 2003 and 2010.
In one of the cases, Minelli is said to have arranged for the assisted suicide of an 80-year-old German woman, despite her not being terminally ill, because she left Dignitas £74,000 in her will. Three doctors had refused to carry out assisted suicide on the grounds that it was unethical, but Minelli found a fourth doctor who was willing to do so. Despite a request to have her ashes buried beside her husband in Germany, prosecutors say they were disposed of in Lake Zurich instead.
