A SWISS lawyer who runs a “suicide clinic” that has helped 42 Britons to kill themselves, intends to offer his services to people who are not terminally ill.

Ludwig Minelli, founder of the Dignitas clinic in Zurich, says he wants to open a chain of high street-style centres to end the lives of people with illnesses or mental conditions such as chronic depression.

“We never say no,” says Minelli in an interview in today’s Sunday Times Magazine. “Even those suffering from Alzheimer’s will have lucid moments in which they may choose to die once a certain point has been reached, such as when they can no longer recognise their children.”

He adds that he might help someone who had been clinically depressed for at least 10-12 years to die, although not someone who was suffering from a passing bout of acute depression.

Minelli’s comments angered opponents, who fear more Britons will now travel to Switzerland to end their lives. Assisted dying is illegal in this country, although a bill to permit it for the terminally ill will receive its second reading in the Lords next month.

Minelli’s plans, however, go far beyond the scope of the bill. He insists the mentally ill have the same rights as those with stable minds to choose how to die.

“The idea of a terminal illness as a condition for assisted suicide is a British obsession,” he said.

“We need to set up advisory centres where people can openly discuss problems and seek advice about methods and risks, without the fear of losing their freedom and being put in an institution. These centres can only be credible if they offer assisted suicide.”

Dr Peter Saunders, general secretary of the Christian Medical Fellowship, said: “Minelli does not understand that attempting suicide is a call for help. Once the physical and psycho-spiritual needs are met the desire for suicide tends to go away.

“It is laughable to suggest that someone with Alzheimer’s, who cannot remember two minutes later what they told you, could have the capacity to understand and weigh up and make a decision on suicide. The potential for abuse is horrendous.”

Figures released last week showed 5,755 killed themselves in 2003, a record low. The reduction was steepest among young men, historically the most vulnerable group. Despite this, there is little the British authorities can do to stop people travelling to Switzerland to use Minelli’s services, although anyone helping them could face legal proceedings.

One GP, Michael Irwin, has been struck off and questioned by the police after he admitted attempting to assist a terminally ill friend in Britain to die. He also helped five other people to contact Dignitas to die in Switzerland.

Since it was set up in 1998, Dignitas has assisted in the suicides of more than 450 people, 42 of them from the UK. The most recent was Dr Anne Turner from Bath, who took her life in Zurich in January.

Dignitas is able to operate because the Swiss legal system permits the act of assisting people to kill themselves. The law in England and Wales makes the same act punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

Most of Dignitas’s members have been terminally ill, but there have also been isolated cases of people with non-fatal conditions being helped to die.

In 2003 Jennifer and Robert Stokes, who both suffered from depression, died in each other’s arms after travelling to the clinic to kill themselves.Minelli, 74, admitted that neither was terminally ill but said British law could not prosecute him because none of his assistants would ever give evidence.

The need for terminally ill British people to travel to Switzerland to die would be eliminated if Lord Joffe’s assisted dying for the terminally ill bill becomes law.

Joffe has said: “I can assure you that I would prefer that the [new] law did apply to patients who were younger and who were not terminally ill but who were suffering unbearably,” but added: “I believe that this bill should initially be limited.”

Dr Brian Iddon, MP for Bolton South East and chairman of the Care Not Killing alliance, set up to oppose Joffe’s bill, said: “Putting people who are mentally ill to death just because they are mentally ill is abhorrent.”

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, a consultant in palliative care who sat on the House of Lords select committee inquiring into the new bill, said: “We know from psychiatrists that there are lots of people who attempt suicide and years later they are really glad they were not successful.”

Dignity in Dying, the pro- euthanasia group formerly known as the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, also said it could not sanction Minelli’s views.

“We are campaigning on behalf of people who are terminally ill and mentally competent,” a spokesman said. “That way you can assure you are not harming vulnerable people.”

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