AG百家乐在线官网

By Sadiya Chowdhury, news correspondent

DR DEATH SPEAKS

Content warning: this article contains references to suicide

In a room in Dublin, a man nicknamed "Dr Death" is teaching people how to die. A dozen people are here to plan their suicides.

On a screen, poisonous substances are ranked in order of convenience, availability and painfulness.  

Dr Death sits at the front of the room, not facing directly at his audience - almost as if it's too hard to look them in the eye. But they clearly have no inhibitions about being there.  

One woman says she has travelled from Singapore for this. The audience is made up mainly of elderly people - many have seen friends and family die in horrific ways.  

Their host promises an answer for their desperation. In vivid detail, he describes how their final moments could offer something different. It sounds too good to be true. 

Like in many countries, in Ireland it's illegal to help someone kill themselves and doing so could lead to up to 14 years in prison. But Dr Death is constantly interrupted and asked about DIY suicide kits. These are parcels shipped to individuals - young and old, ill or not - packed with poisons.

"How did you get it?", a woman in a blue floral dress asks. 

 "Illegally," says Dr Death. "That's what the workshop will be about." 

Dr Death speaks in a friendly Australian accent. A medical doctor by background, he has a fascination with dying.  

He tells Sky News he's previously set up livestreams to watch people take their own lives and has lost count of how many he's seen.  

 Dr Death knows he's treading a fine line. 

"But if I tell you to go to this place and buy it, that's not considered to be a strong enough link to be in breach of the law.

"We're just telling people how they can get the substance. Assisting would be if I gave you the substance."

Dr Death admits he holds himself responsible for many deaths. 

"I've got my own [substance] in my cupboard," he says proudly, before explaining why he wants to help others have it too. 

"Why is that my privilege? If a person comes and says 'Look, I think I'd like to have some in my cupboard too, because it would give me a feeling of comfort', I would say I agree, you should know how to get it."

Pressed on the idea that vulnerable people should be guarded from poisons, Dr Death says he doesn't think everyone should be prevented from accessing the substances just because "some people might misuse it," including the young.

 He boasts that his work has led to rising suicides.

Does he feel bad about that? "It's a difficult question to answer," he says. "I'm aware that we have created a new way of ending your life."

Dr Death goes on to demonstrate his "practical steps for a DIY death", but asks Sky News to stop filming.

THE SUICIDE CONVENTION

In the Dutch city of Utrecht, a stream of young people in fancy dress are heading into its convention centre for an annual Comic Con festival. 

A medieval plague doctor chats to two girls in pink school uniforms with angel wings, while a Captain America breaks into a brisk jog to catch up to his friends who are in bright multi-coloured cosplay wigs.

On the floor, footprint-shaped stickers show the way to a suicide convention taking place upstairs in the same venue. 

The room is full of Dutch men and women who support decriminalising assisted suicide.

They take their seats in neatly arranged rows of white chairs. The room's walls are curved and painted white, the floor is white, and so is the stage. 

The audience laughs as a man on the stage jokes about hiding poison in the information envelopes he's just handed out.  

Hans longs for a day when he can die at his own will.    

"I won't have to ask someone else to assess if I may die," he tells Sky News, explaining that Dutch law allows physician-assisted suicide, but he wants to have full autonomy over his own death. 

"You have to be severely ill and when I'm not severely ill, but I'm done with life.... I've read all the books I've wanted to read, and I have seen all the films and ballets which I like to attend, my husband is dead and my daughter has arrived in [adult] life [then], she will understand that I want to end my life."

Hans isn't alone in thinking this way.    

Among the crowd, two people who have previously been jailed for assisting suicide are treated like VIP guests.

He talks softly to explain why he's appealing the court's decision.

"He is a brave citizen," Hans says.

THE POISON SELLERS

Down a narrow corridor, away from the main hall, a poison seller agrees to speak to Sky News. 

"I think it must be free to get without conditions," he says in a deep voice with a Dutch accent. He believes anyone and everyone should have access to suicide poisons. 

"People are going to say, 'But somebody of 18 years old can get it too?' Yes, why not?", he asks.

The man says the poison he's selling is sourced from England. "They send it by post," he says, before explaining how he gets the substance pressed into pills and ready for distribution. 

In a notebook tucked under his arm, orders, prices, and receipts spill out - evidence of his poison trading history.

It's a lucrative business as he divulges eyebrow-raising profit margins.   

But not everyone is selling poisons for financial gain. 

Poison seller Wim says he is a psychologist and tells his customers they must have a "diagnostic interview" with him. 

Wim says he would speak to buyers for several hours before agreeing to sell them suicide poisons. 

"I wanted to be sure that for myself it was morally acceptable to give it to people," he adds. 

They include people in the Netherlands, the UK, the US, Singapore and Hong Kong, he claims. 

Sky News reminds Wim of the young people who have lost their lives to suicide through poisons.

"There can be misuse or abuse," he says. "I don't want everybody to get it... when [people] are in need and they want to die, [I want] legislation in which it is possible to get it in the end."

Although he no longer sells poison, Wim says every day he receives enquiries from people around the world who are desperate to end their lives, including from the UK. 

He says his wife died in 2019 after a long spell with Alzheimer's and suffered a "horrific death" that "triggered" him.

"I wanted to help people to end their lives in a humane way with dignity," he adds. 

Euthanasia is frequently used to justify the crime of assisting suicide, and even in the Netherlands, where physician-assisted dying is legal - we encounter one man who makes a shocking confession.

He tells Sky News he gave his "substance" to a friend - a nurse - who in turn gave it to her sick 93-year-old father who was denied euthanasia for being "too far on mentally".

"She went to bed and the next morning she found him. She called the doctor and the doctor said yes he's died (naturally)," the man told us.

Giving a poison to anyone who wants to die is assisting suicide - a crime - but giving it to someone without their consent and resulting in their death is murder.

Sky News has verified this with a UK-based toxicologist and has been told that some poisons can only be traced through a specialist post-mortem where organ tissue is examined. These are rarely commissioned, even in many unexplained or unexpected deaths.

SUICIDE CASES

A female poison seller meets us in a busy train station cafe.

With light grey hair and wearing a cashmere jumper, she says she goes by the nickname "Lupin" - after the poisonous flower. 

She describes a network of tunnels she uses to make and sell poison. Nobody asks any questions of the customers - no names, no ages, nothing to enquire about someone's mental health. Suicide poison, she says, is a basic right for any individual to have.

We tell Lupin the stories of young people in Britain who have taken their own lives using poison.    

Student Tom Parfett was found dead in a hotel room in 2021 with a poison next to his body. He was 22. 

Twenty-five-year-old Imogen (Immy) Nunn had publicly highlighted her mental health struggles on TikTok before using poison to take her own life on New Year's Day 2022. 

Having giggled frequently through our meeting, Lupin suddenly takes a serious tone and says: "The parent must respect the child's wishes to die." 

Both Tom and Immy's parents have spoken about the devastation caused by poison sellers.   

"In many ways, it's a pro-death cult鈥� these people are deliberately targeting the vulnerable, encouraging them to die.

"They are putting forward the idea that it's an individual's right to take their own life." 

In the days after Tom's death, David discovered the ease with which poison sellers target vulnerable people.  

"I ordered the poison myself," he reveals. "To get that parcel in the post, knowing that my son had taken it to end his own life, I struggle to find the words to describe what that's like." 

Immy's mother Louise Nunn says her daughter struggled with being deaf and felt she was isolated.

"She spent four years in hospital," Louise says. "That was a really hard time. She struggled a lot in there during COVID." 

She says authorities need to better understand the dangers of suicide poisons. When police checked in on Immy in the days before her death, Louise claims officers had no idea what to do.   

"They asked her if she had purchased anything," she says.

"Immy said no. They had no [sign language] interpreter and said Immy was fine and left."

Louise adds: "I'm sure if she'd got drugs or a gun in there, they would've gone in and they wouldn't have left until they'd found it.

"To leave her with something else that was going to kill her is, in my eyes, the same thing." 

Sussex Police said officers left Immy with a number of referrals for support and that because she was an adult, it didn't contact her family. 

CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION

Investigations relating to deaths, including through suicide, are nearly always led by police forces but it is the National Crime Agency (NCA) which is exploring "all viable leads linked to a Canadian suspect in order to identity evidence of crimes committed in the UK".

The investigation is into the deaths of 93 individuals who purchased substances to assist with suicide.

Days after the NCA first looked into Kenneth Law, one of his alleged customers reached out to Sky News.