A teacher with no diagnosed illness took his own life at a Swiss suicide clinic without the knowledge of his family.
Alastair Hamilton, 47, died by lethal injection at the Pegasos clinic in Basel after telling his parents he was visiting a friend in Paris.
His mother Judith, 81, visited the clinic for an ITV documentary after it apologised for failings surrounding the case.
She told the broadcaster: “We weren’t given that chance to either be with him or in my case, drag him home, tooth and nail if I had to.”
Pegasos, which is run by activist Ruedi Habegger, does not require people to be ill to have their death request approved, unlike Dignitas.
Mr Hamilton, a chemistry teacher from Hampton, south-west London, had been battling with low moods before he flew out to the clinic.
He had given up working full-time and moved back in with his parents as he began to lose weight and feel increasingly tired.
Doctors were unable to diagnose him with any condition, despite several private health checks.
His brother Toby, 52, told The Mail on Sunday that he had started mentioning suicide “like he was talking about going for a pint down the pub”.
Mr Hamilton flew to Switzerland on Aug 10. His father Edward, 85, drove him to Gatwick Airport, believing that his son was meeting a friend in France.
‘Remember mum that I love you’
Mrs Hamilton told the newspaper that her son “put his arms around me and gave me a big kiss” the last time he saw her.
She added that he told her: “Always remember mum that I love you very much, I always have, I always will, no matter what.”
While abroad, Mr Hamilton stopped responding to his family’s calls, texts and voicemails and they soon phoned the police to report him as a missing person.
The Metropolitan Police traced Mr Hamilton to Pegasos through his bank details and were told by the clinic that he had died.
The clinic refused to provide police with the date of his death or any other information.
In emails to Mr Hamilton’s family, a Met Police sergeant criticised Pegasos for its “lack of compassion and lack of transparency”.