The Swiss voice in the world since 1935

Swiss assisted suicide campaigner dies in Germany

Florian Willet dead, accompanied woman to die in Sarco capsule
Florian Willet dead, accompanied woman to die in Sarco capsule Keystone-SDA

Florian Willet, co-president of the assisted suicide organisation The Last Resort, died on May 5 in Germany.

The 47-year-old was present when the Sarco suicide capsule was first used in Switzerland in September 2024 and had been placed in pre-trial detention for 70 days. The death was announced in an obituaryExternal link published yesterday on the website of The Last Resort.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

Willet, who lived in Zurich, was the only person present when an American woman took her own life in a forest near Merishausen in canton Schaffhausen on September 23, 2024. The public prosecutor’s office in Schaffhausen had subsequently ordered preventive detention against him and had also opened criminal proceedings against other people.

More

The public prosecutor’s office believed that Willet might have killed the woman because the capsule had not worked as intended. However, the suspicion was not confirmed and the man was released in early December 2024.

The proceedings against the deceased will be discontinued, Peter Sticher, first prosecutor of canton Schaffhausen, announced to the Keystone-SDA agency this morning. The investigation opened against the other persons involved has not yet been concluded.

More

Adapted from Italian by DeepL/ac

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication. 

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at [email protected]

A smartphone displays the SWIplus app with news for Swiss citizens abroad. Next to it, a red banner with the text: ‘Stay connected with Switzerland’ and a call to download the app.

Popular Stories

Most Discussed

News

In compliance with the JTI standards

More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative

You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!

If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at [email protected].

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR
OSZAR »