The black plastic bin liners (Garbage bags) were bulging and cluttered the back
stairs to the office of Ludwig Minelli, founder and
head of the assisted suicide organisation Dignitas.
Soraya Wernli was new
to the job as a 'companion', one of those hired by Minelli,
75, to assist people in their final journey to the 'other side'.
Paperwork, words of comfort, a gentle hand for those about to end their pain-filled lives
- these were some of the things the former district nurse knew she was signing
up for when she agreed to work for him.
'But then, just a few days into
the job, he asked me to sort through the stuff in these plastic bin liners
clogging the stairs,' she said.
'Minelli
said I should empty the sacks onto a long table - they were huge - and sort
through everything. I opened one up and was horrified by what was inside. Mobile phones, handbags, ladies' tights, shoes, spectacles, money,
purses, wallets, jewels.
'I realised these were possessions which had been
left behind by the dead. They had never been returned to family members. Minelli made his patients sign forms saying the possessions
were now the property of Dignitas and then sold
everything on to pawn and second-hand shops.
'I
felt disgusted. You see these old photos
of people in Nazi death camps sorting through the possessions of those who had
been gassed. Well, right then and there, that is how I felt.'
As a nurse and a former care
worker for the elderly, Mrs Wernli,
51, was no stranger to death and a supporter of assisted suicide.
But in the two-and-a-half years
she spent working for Minelli at his 'clinic' in
She has launched lawsuits against
him, and spent the last eight months of her time at the clinic acting as an
undercover informant for the police, who were also concerned by Minelli.
Nominated for the Prize of
Courage by a Swiss newspaper in 2007 - she garnered praise for her efforts in
exposing what she claims is a 'production line of death concerned only with profits'
- Mrs Wernli has embarked
on writing a book.
It has the title The Business With The Deadly Cocktails, and she promises an in- depth
expose of a 'principled and necessary organisation
gone bad'.
She lives with her husband some
50 miles from
More than 100 of them have been
Britons, some of them accompanied and assisted by Mrs
Wernli, who was on a salary of £4,500 a month.
'Minelli
is book-keeper, secretary general-chief accountant and gatekeeper of the organisation. Nothing gets audited,' says Mrs Wernli. 'It is time the Swiss
authorities stopped pussyfooting around him.'
Mrs Wernli, a
mild-mannered, attractive blonde, was drawn into the Dignitas
organisation through her husband Kurt's friendship
with Minelli - a man he has known for 35 years. That
friendship, like her employment, is now terminated. These days, the only time
the two sides ever speak is through their respective lawyers.
As a companion to those seeking
to end their lives, Mrs Wernli
has sat in on the suicides of 35 people. One of the first she met was Reginald Crew, 74, from
Liverpool, who ended his life in the 'death house' - a residential
block in Gertrudstrasse,
The motor neurone
disease sufferer was one of the first Britons to take advantage of the legal
black hole which Dignitas exploits.
Minelli, a former journalist who has two
daughters, has never been prosecuted for an illegal killing, but Mrs Wernli said she has seen
enough to know the Swiss authorities' indifference to his practice is wrong.
'Mr
Crew arrived in the morning and was dead just hours later,' she says. 'This was
another of my many clashes with Minelli. I argued that it
wasn't right that people land at the airport, are ferried to his office, have
their requisite half-an-hour with a doctor, get the barbiturates they need and
are then sent off to die.
'This is the biggest step anyone
will ever take. They should at least be allowed to stay overnight, to think
about what they are doing. But Minelli would have
none of it. He once said to me that if he had his way, he would have vending
machines where people could buy barbiturates to end their lives as easily as if
they were buying a soft drink or a bar of chocolate. I support assisted suicide
- but not the way he went about it.'
The Gertrudstrasse
flat was a small affair, furnished cheaply and serviced by a single lift. When
the corpses were brought downstairs to waiting hearses, the other residents
complained of 'sharing the lift with the stiffs'.
'But it wasn't just the dead who
had the indignity of being stood up in body bags to be transported to the
hearses below,' recalls Mrs Wernli.
'I remember a very large,
wheelchair-bound British lady who had come to die. She was too big to fit into
the lift. So her wheelchair had to be manoeuvred up
the stairs to the flat. Her screams filled the place,
she was in so much pain.
'The room where people were to
die was often filthy, because Minelli skimped on the
cleaning bills. Often there would be shoes or underwear or some other deeply
personal item of an earlier victim lying beneath the bed or around the room. It
was shameful.
'I tried to be as professional
and caring as possible; checking the paperwork and making sure that, above
everything, those who wanted to die were suffering from a terminal illness and
were not psychiatrically ill or simply tired of life.'
Eventually, Minelli
was forced out to find new premises, finding a room in a business park, close
to a garage and a martial arts centre. Daniel James, a young rugby player from
Just 23, Daniel had been paralysed after being crushed in a rugby
scrum during training, and did not want to live his life in a wheelchair.
The case caused concern both in
the
'Daniel James was by no means the
first person to have been helped to die who wasn't terminally ill - and I doubt
he will be the last,' says Mrs Wernli.
'In March 2003, there were Robert
and Jennifer Stokes from Leighton Buzzard, who were in their 50s and both had a
history of mental illness and failed suicide attempts.
'They were in constant pain from
chronic diseases, but were not considered to be dying. Yet they were dispatched
with the aid of Dignitas.
'Minelli
later said that depression, in certain circumstances, can be deemed an
"irreversible illness".'
'This was another of my big rows
with Minelli early on. I argued - and I had
experience of this through my career as a nurse - that double suicides should never
be sanctioned. One partner may want to die simply because he or she
cannot cope with being alone.
'To that end, I got Minelli to agree to move one of the beds out of the death
room at the Gertrudstrasse house. But I later learned
that he went behind my back. Other, more unscrupulous workers took my place to
allow couples to kill themselves; one dying on the floor, the other on the bed.
'And Minelli
has the cheek to call his practice Dignitas, when
dignity is the last thing afforded to these poor people.'
Mrs Wernli has been
pressing for an official examination of Minelli's
books. While he charges around £7,000 for an assisted suicide and funeral, she
claims many wealthy people have bequeathed him 'vast sums'.
'I remember the case of Martha Hauschildt, a German woman, who died aged 81 in the death
house in July 2003. I saw from the
paperwork that she gave Minelli 200,000 Swiss francs
- around £120,000. These are people who are vulnerable.'
But it is not just Minelli who attracts Mrs Wernli's criticism. She also says some of the doctors that Dignitas has used over the years - to screen would-be
suicides and to write out the prescriptions for the barbiturates they need to
kill themselves with - were either corrupt or inept.
Three have been removed from
their posts by the authorities, and one doctor - an 82-year-old man whom Mrs Wernli claims was 'clearly
not with it' - has since died. 'The doctors get 500 francs from Minelli for an examination,' she says. 'I don't know of a
single case where they have refused to hand out the drugs.'
She also says Minelli
has a private stock of drugs in his personal office. 'I can only assume they're
in case of emergency,' she said.
It was the gruesome 70-hour death
of Peter Auhagen, a German man,
that came closest to bringing Minelli into the
dock. It was the case that finished Mrs Wernli with Dignitas and sent her
to the police, where she enrolled as a secret informer.
The scandal of Auhagen's death was the subject of a TV documentary in
The majority of Dignitas clients kill themselves by drinking a spiked drug
cocktail containing a lethal dose of barbiturates.
But Mrs
Wernli recalls: 'On this
occasion Minelli wanted to try out a "suicide
machine" - which operated by a system of tubes and valves - that the
patient controlled to administer the drugs intravenously.
'I don't know where Minelli had got this machine from. All I know is the man
was still alive in the death room 24 hours later. I had to take over from the
female companion who was there because she was exhausted.
'The machine had a fault which meant it couldn't pump all
the poison into his system. The man was partially poisoned, in agony and
thrashing around in a coma, frothing at the mouth and sweating. I had to clean
him. It was a terrible thing to witness, and I knew it could not go on.
'I slept on the kitchen floor of
the apartment that night. In the morning, after 48 hours had gone by, I told
the family Mr Auhagen had
to go to hospital. I rang Minelli and he broke with
his usual habit by actually turning up at the death house.'
This was indeed out of character
- Minelli's offices are in a different area to the
flat, and he normally stays well clear of the scene.
Mrs Wernli went on:
'He was angry - not at the failed suicide, but with me for suggesting that the
man should be in a hospital bed. "Are you crazy?" he said. "Do
you know what the papers will say about this - that Dignitas has mucked it all up? We are falling behind here -
there are others waiting to use that room!
' "You are here as a helper. This man wants
to die, and he cannot die. I want you to help this man and his family here."
'I told him I loved my three
children and I didn't want to spend the next five years separated from them in
prison.
'He then confronted the family
and said: "Bundle him up and drive him back across the border to a German
hospital where you won't have to pay for hospital treatment."
'One of the sons grabbed Minelli by the throat - he was that angry.
Then Minelli
calmed the situation down and suggested the family go for a walk.'
What occurred next is lost in the
ether of accusation and counteraccusation, but one fact is incontrovertible: Mr Auhagen died in that room.
Minelli told police that he passed away as he
turned him over, and that 'under no circumstances' had he been injected with
suicide drugs - an act which would be illegal.
Mrs Wernli has
tears in her eyes as she recounts the events of that day. She says: 'Of course,
I know what I think, and that is what I later told the police. Someone, I don't
know who, administered the drugs by injection. His widow confirmed as much on
the TV programme. But this whole shabby, shameful
episode made me know I wanted to close Minelli down.'
Swiss prosecutors confirm they
are handling her claims about personal property being sold on and Minelli's alleged personal enrichment. Minelli
denies all the allegations.
'Mrs Soraya Wernli quit working with Dignitas back in March 2005 - almost four years ago,' said
a spokesman for Dignitas. 'Thus, we wonder how she
should possibly be competent to know how we work these days.
'There are, and have been, people
around, who - for whatever reasons - spread rumours
and false allegations. Generally, we do not comment on these rumours and allegations any more, because it is simply a
waste of time.'
Whatever the case, Dignitas today is still in business and people are still
dying. Now employees are made to sign a privacy agreement personally drawn up
by Minelli.
Mrs Wernli has not
given up. 'I like to think that some of what I passed on is still being
examined by the police,' she says.
'But this is