Swiss right-to-die group to expand into Germany

ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss right-to-die group Dignitas wants to set up an organization in Germany to carry out assisted suicides there, Dignitas head Ludwig Minelli was quoted as saying on Saturday.

Minelli told Swiss newspaper Landbote that his organization had found someone in Germany who was ready to risk prosecution to offer seriously ill people a chance to get assisted suicides at home rather than having to travel across the border to Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal.

"It is not right that Germany forces its seriously ill patients to leave their beds instead of us being able to come to them," Minelli said in an interview.

"In the case of suicide it is about a human right," he said.

He said Dignitas was prepared to take the case to the German Federal Court of Justice.

Dignitas, which has been using hotel rooms for the assisted suicides after being barred from a number of flats in Zurich, has come under fire recently after some clients died in their cars.

Minelli said using cars for suicides was not the organization's idea.

"The two Germans said to my colleagues that they would prefer to die in their own car rather than in a strange hotel," Minelli said.

Assisted suicide has been allowed in Switzerland since the 1940s. Non-physicians can participate in assisted suicide but euthanasia is not legal.

The laws, some of the most liberal in the world, have led in recent years to "suicide tourism", where terminally ill foreigners travel to Switzerland to die.

In 2006, Dignitas helped 195 people to die and 57 percent of those were German, Minelli said.

(Reporting by Katie Reid; editing by Sami Aboudi)