Autopsy On Italy Comatose Woman Finds No Foul Play

Eluana Englaro died suddenly on Monday just as parliament was debating a government bill that would have forced doctors to keep her alive.

An autopsy on the Italian woman whose right-to-die case has rocked Italy found no sign of foul play imputed by some anti-euthanasia activists, a police source said, but the political row over her fate raged on.

Eluana Englaro, who had been in a vegetative state for 17 years, died suddenly on Monday just as parliament was debating a government bill that would have forced doctors to keep her alive through a feeding tube.

When she died at a clinic in the northern city of Udine, Englaro had not been fed or hydrated for four days at her family's request and in line with a ruling by Italy's top court contested by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and the Vatican.

Berlusconi said Englaro was killed, accusing leftist President Giorgio Napolitano of being among those responsible for refusing to sign an emergency decree ordering doctors to keep her alive.

Some anti-euthanasia activists suggested Englaro's death had been accelerated with sedatives as parliament looked set to rush through a bill that would have forced them to resume feeding her. "Eluana, answers must be given" was the front page headline of Avvenire, the newspaper of Italy's Catholic bishops.

Catholic activists opposed to letting her die have called for a thorough investigation into her death. Most medical experts had expected the 38-year-old Englaro, in a coma since a 1992 car crash, to survive around two weeks without nutrition.

Preliminary results from an autopsy on her body found that she died of a cardio-respiratory failure due to dehydration, a police source in Udine said on Wednesday.

Regional prosecutor Beniamino Deidda told reporters the cause of death was in line with what had been expected following the suspension of food and water. Deidda said her body would be handed over to her family for burial in a "matter of hours".

The case has riveted Italy and provoked the ire of the Vatican, which sided openly with the government in the case, rekindling a debate over Catholic Church influence in politics.

"I think what happened in Udine was a monstrosity ... to die by lack of food and water is not a natural death," Gaetano Quagliarello, a senator in Berlusconi's Poeple of Freedom party, said in a letter to Corriere della Sera daily.

The centre-left opposition has attacked Berlusconi and his conservative government for trying to reap political gains from the case.

"I feel indignant and ashamed by the spectacle that some politicians offered," said Antonio Di Pietro, leader of the centre-left Italy of Values party.

"The murderers here are those who put (Eluana's father) Beppino Englaro on trial for the most difficult and painful choice of his life," he said.