Police in northern Switzerland have arrested and detained multiple people in connection with the death of an unnamed 64-year-old American woman. But the suspects in this case have every reason to believe they are victims of an elaborate entrapment scheme. After all, the wrongful death in which they are implicated was aided and abetted by their own government.
The woman who lost her life died as a result of the use of the “Sarco” suicide capsule. This grim contraption, which had never previously been used for its intended purpose, is designed to kill. Its users enter a futuristic, 3D-printed pod, closing the airtight doors behind them. They are asked to answer a few automated questions — do they know who and where they are, and are they mentally competent enough to understand what is about to happen to them next? And if those answers are satisfactory, the chamber fills with nitrogen gas, suffocating its victims.
In other words, this unholy appliance performed precisely as advertised. So, what’s the problem? Well, Swiss law makes suicide legal, even for foreigners and tourists, but only so long as the individual takes their own life absent any “external assistance” — particularly from those acting on a “self-serving motive.” In this case, some of the people in attendance wanted to make sure the device worked, including a photographer who allegedly took pictures of the capsule. So, the witness’s crime was to attempt to secure proof that this suicide machine actually worked.
If Swiss law was scrupulously observed, this woman should have died utterly alone — unaided by anyone, her final thoughts known only to her maker. If that’s best practice, maybe the problem isn’t with how this device is used but the fact that it exists at all.