L’association Ultime Liberté, née d’une scission radicale de l’ADMD, est jugée à partir de ce lundi pour avoir aidé des dizaines de personnes à se procurer illégalement du pentobarbital entre 2018 et 2020, relançant le débat sur l’euthanasie et le droit à mourir dans la dignité.
The trial ends on October 9th.
The trial will end on October 9th.
The Ultime Liberté association, born from a radical split from the ADMD, is being judged starting this Monday for having helped dozens of people illegally obtain pentobarbital between 2018 and 2020, reigniting the debate on euthanasia and the right to die with dignity.
A sudden spotlight on the clandestine world of assisted suicide: the Paris court is judging twelve end-of-life activists starting Monday for helping people, sick or not, obtain barbiturates to end their lives.
Aged 74 to 89, these members of the discreet Ultime Liberté association, born from a split of the most radical fringe of the pro-euthanasia organization Association pour le Droit de Mourir dans la Dignité (ADMD), are being prosecuted for assisting dozens of people in purchasing pentobarbital online between August 2018 and November 2020, a barbiturate that leads to a quick and painless death.
By addressing a taboo, «this hearing is an opportunity to raise public awareness about end-of-life issues,» said Me Arnaud Lévy-Soussan, lawyer for the majority of the defendants, many of whom are retired teachers with clean criminal records. They are being judged before the criminal court for offenses related to the trafficking of illicit substances.
Highly divisive, Ultime Liberté’s fight goes beyond the traditional euthanasia associations’ claim for a «right to assisted dying» for terminally ill patients in great suffering, a burning bioethical issue that was the subject of a new bill passed in the first reading in the National Assembly in May.
Seeing itself as the continuation of the activist movements of the 1960s-70s (contraception, abortion) on the freedom to dispose of one’s body, Ultime Liberté pushes this logic to its extreme and claims the right to a «peaceful» suicide, whether one is sick or not, as long as the person making this choice is in full possession of their faculties and their decision is well-thought-out.
«Suicide has been decriminalized since the Revolution, but there are many laws that prevent the freedom of suicide, non-violent suicide,» stated Claude Hury, president of Ultime Liberté and a central defendant in the Paris trial.
«Our goal is not to make people die. It is to help them continue to age peacefully, knowing they have the magic pill at home to stop when they decide, instead of waiting for medical intervention,» she affirmed.
This unique case began in the summer of 2019 with a report from American authorities about a Mexican supply chain of barbiturates. Packaged in brown bottles with blue caps, the pentobarbital was shipped worldwide under the innocuous label «Natural Cosmetics.»
Currently restricted to veterinary use in France, as an anesthetic and euthanizing agent, pentobarbital is a depressant of the central nervous system, used for assisted suicides in countries where this practice is legal, such as Belgium or Switzerland.
Based on a list of buyers discovered by American investigators, French authorities conducted around a hundred raids across the country in October 2019. The buyers – already deceased in about thirty cases – were mostly elderly or seriously ill individuals, often from intellectual professions. However, in some cases, suicides seemed unrelated to severe illnesses or old age.
The judicial investigation then uncovered a semi-clandestine aspect of the Ultime Liberté association, where some members «assist» people wishing to die. Illegally, these activists provide information on how to obtain pentobarbital online through encrypted messaging, and in some cases, assist them in the process. The level of commitment that each «companion» freely chooses, but which is debated within the association itself.
By only sharing this information with individuals who have requested it, the members of Ultime Liberté did not have «the intention of promoting or facilitating the decision to commit suicide but rather of +accompanying+ said decision,» the investigating judge ruled in referring them to trial.
Philosopher André Comte-Sponville, former deputy Jean-Louis Touraine, and physician Véronique Fournier are expected to testify about the end-of-life issues. The trial ends on October 9th.
Deja una respuesta