The broad smile and bottle of wine on the table do not speak of a man unduly burdened by the strain of recent events. Some might expect a person who has spent 70 days behind bars and who, shortly after this photograph was taken, was admitted to hospital to look more exhausted, defeated even. For in an exclusive interview, Dr Philip Nitschke, the controversial Australian known as 'Dr Death', tells the Mail that the younger man in the shot - Florian Willet, head of the assisted suicide group The Last Resort - has been 'extremely upset' by the way the authorities have treated him since the events of last September.
That was when a year-old, as yet unnamed, American mother-of-two became the first person to end her life in a controversial futuristic suicide pod known as the Sarco, short for sarcophagus, created by Dr Nitschke and dubbed the ' Tesla of euthanasia'. She is said to have been suffering debilitating pain from a severe immune disorder when she decided to climb inside the pod in a forest in the Swiss district of Schaffhausen on September 23, with Dr Willet the only witness to her suicide.
The furore surrounding the use of the pod grew when reports emerged of strange marks being found on the woman's neck. Prosecutors requested that Florian Willet be detained further while suspicions of 'intentional homicide' were probed. That allegation was dropped in December, but as the Mail has discovered this week, nearly four months on the cloud that has dogged Florian and The Last Resort continues to linger.
On Friday, the chief prosecutor in the case told us he would investigate for 'as long as it takes' - years if necessary β to probe what actually happened.
Meanwhile, a slew of new evidence has emerged β including findings suggesting that the American woman's death was not peaceful and that questions remain about the reliability of camera footage from inside the capsule. The details are both intriguing and troubling.
