The Udine branch of the Medical Association has begun preliminary hearings to establish whether disciplinary proceedings should go ahead for the medical team who removed the feeding tube of Eluana Englaro, it said Tuesday.
Eluana's anaesthetist, Amato De Monte, will appear before a committee on Thursday, and the rest of the team of volunteer medics who helped Eluana end her life at an Udine clinic will also be called, the branch said.
The committee will then decide whether or not to proceed with the case.
''It's absolutely too early to express any opinion or judgement'', Udine branch president Luigi Conte told ANSA.
De Monte said he had ''nothing to hide'' and that he would discuss autopsy results with the committee.
Udine prosecutor's office has ordered the autopsy for Eluana, who died Monday evening after her condition rapidly deteriorated.
Her medical team removed her feeding tube on Friday in accordance with a landmark court ruling but had expected it to take up to two weeks for her heart to stop beating.
Eluana's early death thwarted last-minute efforts by the government, supported by the Catholic Church, to step in and reverse the ruling.
''For the moment we have no news from the commission of any crime,'' the public prosecutor in nearby Trieste, Beniamino Deidda, told ANSA.
In the hours after Eluana's death, Health Undersecretary Eugenia Roccella hit out at the medical team for removing the tube three days before planned instead of gradually decreasing Eluana's food and water.
''I'm not making subtle accusations or insinuations,'' she said. ''I'm just saying that the doctors did not apply the protocol that had initially been decided upon''.
In 2006 similar proceedings for Mario Riccio, a doctor who turned off a terminally ill man's respirator, were shelved following a unanimous vote by the local Medical Association branch.
The disciplinary committee said Riccio had acted correctly in helping Piergiorgio Welby turn off his life-support machine in accordance with his wishes.
Welby, who had advanced muscular dystrophy, described himself as a ''prisoner'' of his own body.
Eluana's father, Beppino Englaro, had been fighting for a decade for a dignified end to his daughter's life, which he said would have been her wish.
Eluana's lawyer, Franca Alessio, said Tuesday there would be no funeral but a blessing at a cemetery near Udine, where Eluana's ashes will be buried next to her grandfather.
