Four leading members of the Final Exit Network (FEN), an assisted suicide organisation, have been arrested in the US state of Georgia over the death of a 58-year-old man. John Celmer, who was recovering from jaw surgery for throat and neck cancer, died in June. He was not terminally ill.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) infiltrated FEN and carried out a nation-wide investigation involving as many as 200 deaths. "The law is very clear and they clearly violated it," said GBI spokesman John Bankhead. The four arrested include FEN’s president, Thomas E. Goodwin, and its medical director, Dr Lawrence D. Egbert. They could get up to five years in jail for assisted suicide; they have also been charged with evidence-tampering and racketeering.

Members of FEN are advised to buy two tanks of helium (which is undetectable in an autopsy) and a plastic hood. If someone asks for help in killing himself, two members help him breathe in the helium and hold his hand as he slowly suffocates. The operation is carried out in great secrecy to avoid police detection.

"We've always realised there are prosecutors who would like to come after us," FEN’s vice-president told AP. "There are plenty of religious prosecutors, people who think this idea is a bad idea. So we don't drive up and plant a flag on the law saying we're hastening a death." It appears that those who helped Mr Celmer to die used latex gloves to avoid fingerprints and destroyed other evidence.

The right to die movement in the US sees the arrests as a test case for assisted suicide. Barbara Coombs Lee, president of the national advocacy group Compassion and Choices, said prosecuting assisted suicide would drive it underground. "It's not the way to make it safe. The plastic bag is sort of the end-of-life equivalent of the coat hanger," she said. ~ AP, Mar 5