A pro-euthanasia rights activist, who was arrested by Swiss authorities for the first recorded use of the “suicide capsule”, allegedly ended his life through assisted suicide.

According to the Independent, 47-year-old Dr Florian Villette was taken into custody last year in connection with the death of a 64-year-old woman on suspicion of “inciting and abetting suicide” and “manslaughter with intent”. Two months later, in December last year, he was released as authorities ruled out the possibility that he had committed the second offence.

The director of Exit International and creator of the Sarco capsule, Dr. Philip Nietzsche, said the authorities’ prosecution caused Dr. Villette severe psychological problems.

As revealed to the Dutch news outlet Volkskrant, the activist ended his life last month in an assisted suicide in Germany. Before passing away on May 5, Dr. Villette had fallen from the third floor of a building, injuring himself and having his mental health closely monitored by a team of specialists.

“When Florian’s custody was suddenly terminated in early December 2024 and he was released, he was a different man,” Dr. Nietzsche said. “His warm smile and his confidence were gone. In their place, there was a man traumatized by the experience of incarceration and the unjust accusation of strangulation.”

A friend of the activist, named Laura, confirmed to the Dutch newspaper that the prison experience had changed him. “This friendly, positive man had turned into an anxious, suspicious man who no longer trusted even his closest friends,” she said. “He was living in his own world. He was becoming increasingly distant from his surroundings.”

Dr Villette, head of the pro-euthanasia group The Last Resort, had been released by authorities in the Safhausen region of northern Switzerland after first using the Sarco capsule – a sealed chamber that releases gas at the touch of a button. Authorities had ruled out the possibility of homicide with intent, but there was still “strong suspicion of the offence of inciting and aiding and abetting suicide”, according to a statement from Swiss prosecutors.

Dr Nietzsche called the strangulation allegations “absurd” and added that he had watched the woman’s death via video in a wooded area in Safhausen near the border with Germany, assuring that the device worked as designed.

The Sarco capsule is designed so that a person sitting in the reclining seat presses a button and nitrogen gas is released into the sealed chamber. The person falls into a stupor and dies of asphyxiation within minutes.

Swiss law allows assisted suicide, provided the person ends their own life without the “action” of another person and those assisting them are not acting for “their own benefit”, according to an official government website. While “active assistance” in euthanasia is illegal, providing the means to commit suicide is legal, as long as the person uses it voluntarily.

Dr Florian Villette suicide leaves a stain on the assisted suicide controversy as it proves that people with mental instability may use it to end their life.