Europe court to rule if quadriplegic has right to die

Europe's human rights court will decide on Friday if a man in a vegetative state can be taken off life support in a case that ignited a fierce euthanasia debate in France.

 Vincent Lambert, who is in his late 30s, was left severely brain damaged and quadriplegic as a result of a 2008 road accident and has for months been at the centre of a judicial tug-of-war over his right to die.

 His wife Rachel, who like him is a psychiatric nurse, has said he would never have wanted to be kept alive artificially, and that she wanted to "let him go".

 The legal drama began in January 2014, when Lambert's doctors, backed by his wife and six of his eight siblings, decided to stop the intravenous food and water keeping him alive in line with a 2005 passive euthanasia law in France.

However, his deeply devout Catholic parents, half-brother and sister won an urgent court application to stop the plan.

In an appeal, the French supreme administrative court, known as the State Council, ordered three doctors to draw up a report on Lambert's condition and in June ruled that the decision to withdraw care from a man with no hope of recovery was lawful.

 Lambert's parents then took the case to the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which ordered France to keep Lambert alive while they decided whether the State Council's decision was in line with the European Convention on Human Rights.

 Laurent Pettiti, a lawyer for Lambert's wife, said that if the rights court quashes the State Council ruling, it would be impossible to stop intravenous nourishment and their legal options run out. Rachel Lambert told AFP in an earlier interview that her husband would "never have wanted to be kept in this state.""Keeping him alive artificially, it is unbearable compared to the man he was."