Berlusconi accuses rivals over coma woman’s death
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Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, jumping into an emotional right-to-die debate over a comatose woman, said she had been killed and accused the leftist president of being among those responsible.
The centre-left opposition accused Berlusconi of trying to reap political capital from the case of Eluana Englaro, who died after 17 years in a coma amid a row over her right to die that has riveted Italy and angered the Vatican.
“Eluana did not die a natural death, she was killed,” Berlusconi told Libero newspaper, blaming President Giorgio Napolitano for rejecting an emergency decree that would have forced doctors to resume feeding her.
“Napolitano made a serious mistake,” another paper quoted Berlusconi as saying. The conservative premier lamented that the bill he then sent to parliament to stop Eluana’s nutrition from being suspended “did not make it in time”.
Englaro, who had been in a coma since a car crash in 1992, was “the only citizen to be condemned to death”, he said.
But the leftist newspaper l’Unita had a black front page with the words “In Pace” - “in peace”.
The flag flew at half-mast over the Senate, which had been discussing Berlusconi’s bill to stop the 38-year-old woman’s father and doctors from suspending her nutrition when she died suddenly on Monday at a clinic in the northern town of Udine.
Doctors had stopped feeding her on Friday at her family’s request, in line with a ruling by Italy’s top court. Berlusconi said this amounted to euthanasia, which is illegal in Italy.
The Vatican has sided openly with Berlusconi, and some opposition figures see Catholic cardinals’ influence behind his outspoken stance.
“If Eluana died because food and water were withdrawn from her, we are facing a horrible crime,” Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, the Vatican’s health minister, told La Stampa daily.
AUTOPSY
As expected, prosecutors ordered an autopsy on Englaro’s body. “As things stand, there’s no indication that a crime was committed,” regional prosecutor Beniamino Deidda told Reuters.
Catholic activists who had opposed stopping feeding Englaro called for a judicial investigation, asking why she died so quickly when she had been expected to survive for several weeks.
“Something very strange has happened,” said Gianluigi Gigli, head of the “For Eluana” anti-euthanasia group, late on Monday.
Outside the Udine clinic where she died, those who favoured letting her die and those who thought it was tantamount to murder prayed and sang through the night, holding candles and placing flowers.
Englaro has been called “Italy’s Terri Schiavo” - the American woman in a vegetative state who was allowed to die in 2005 after a long legal fight.
Her father battled through the courts for 10 years to have her feeding tube disconnected, saying it was her wish not to be kept alive artificially. After her death on Monday night, he simply said: “I just want to be alone.”
Some ordinary Italians, who have followed the case closely for years through the media, expressed relief that Englaro had died, whatever side they took in the ethical debate.
“I am happy her suffering is over, after reaching a point where there was just nothing to be done,” said Rome resident Laura Lichieri. “She deserved a peaceful death.”
By Carlo Saccon
UDINE, Italy (Reuters)
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