Gardaí have asked law enforcement agencies in the United States and the UK to assist in their search for two men who are believed to have helped a woman kill herself in Dublin last week.
Garda sources said they had traced the men, both understood to be US nationals, to a radical pro-euthanasia organisation in Michigan in the American Midwest.
Information has already been passed on, through Interpol, to police in England, where the pair are believed to have travelled. They left Dublin last Saturday, on the same day the woman's body was found in a rented town house at Donnybrook Manor in south Dublin.
The investigation, which is said to be commanding resources similar to a murder inquiry, is being led by Supt Gerry Phillips.
Legal sources said extradition proceedings could be initiated regardless of where the two had fled as assisted suicide was illegal in all jurisdictions with the exception of the Netherlands and the state of Oregon in the US. There, assisted suicide is legal only when certain criteria are met, including the verification by several doctors that the patient suffers from a terminal illness.
The Dublin woman whose death is being investigated was not suffering from such an illness, but had severe depression. Gardaí believed she paid the two Americans about €6,500 each to assist in the suicide.
The woman had no children and was separated. A family member told The Irish Times yesterday that they had been told not to make any comment.
