Italy Court To Rule In Landmark Right-To-Die Case

The court has one month to decide, although a verdict is expected later on Tuesday because of the case`s sensitivity.

Italy's top court could have the final word on whether a man can remove the feeding tube which has kept his comatose daughter alive for 16 years, in a landmark right-to-die case that has split the country.

Eluana Englaro, 37, has been in a vegetative state and receiving food and water artificially at a hospital in the northern Italian town of Lecco since a 1992 car crash.

Her father, Beppino Englaro, has battled through Italy's courts to seek an end to the life support for nearly 10 years.

The country's top court, the Corte di Cassazione, began debating on Tuesday whether an appeal against a July ruling by a lower tribunal -- which, for the first time in Italy, authorised the removal of the feeding tube -- was legitimate.

The court has one month to decide, although a verdict is expected later on Tuesday because of the case's sensitivity.

If, as requested on Tuesday by its general prosecutor, the court rejects the appeal, that would clear the last legal hurdle for Englaro's father to have his daughter taken off life support.

"We are satisfied with the general prosecutor's argument that the appeal is unacceptable, we are hopeful for the final verdict," lawyer Franca Alessio, a court-appointed guardian for Eluana, told Reuters.

The Vatican and Catholic politicians, mainly on the centre right, have said authorising the removal of the feeding tube amounts to justifying euthanasia, which is illegal in mainly Catholic Italy.

The Milan court which delivered the July ruling said it had been proven that Englaro's coma was irreversible and that before the accident she had stated her preference to die rather than being kept alive artificially.

Pro-euthanasia activists hailed that ruling as historic, but Italian political leaders were split over the case.

The Englaro case has been compared to that of American Terri Schiavo, who spent 15 years in a persistent vegetative state and was allowed to die after a long court battle.