A CONTROVERSIALUS right-todie activist who is being extradited to Ireland for helping a woman take her own life told the Sunday Tribune just two hours before his arrest that he would be willing to help more Irish people commit suicide.

The Reverend George Exoo was detained by police in West Virginia last Monday, five years after assisting 49-year-old Rosemary Toole Gilhooley in a planned suicide.

When asked earlier that day by the Sunday Tribune if the US authorities had ever been in contact with him about the criminal case pending against him in Ireland, he replied: "Suffice to say nothing has happened, I've heard nothing. There was no grand jury. They wrote that a grand jury had been convened.

No, no, there's been nothing."

Less than two hours after the telephone interview, the 64-yearold was arrested. He said that although he could not come to Ireland to assist people to die, he would be willing to help if they came to America. He also said that others in his organisation would consider travelling to Ireland.

"People would have to come here and I can say I live adjacent to two of the three states in the US where assisting a suicide is not illegal.

They would go to North Carolina I think, that would be the logical place. Oh sure, I'd talk to them. Sure I'd look at any situation and I do have other people that I work with who would be able to travel overseas but I personally can't do it - because of Ireland, I can't leave the US."

Exoo, who admitted he continued to help at least three people die in the US each year, launched an extraordinary attack on the father of Rosemary Toole Gilhooley, saying that gardai would never have investigated her death had he kept his mouth shut.

Exoo and his assistant travelled from West Virginia in January 2002 to a rented apartment in Donnybrook, Dublin where they met Toole Gilhooley. They sat with her while she took heavy painkillers and put a plastic bag over her head. Assisted suicide is illegal in this country and carries a potential jail sentence of 14 years.

Exoo said of Owen Toole: "Only the Irish have a criminal case against me or a complaint against me and that wouldn't have happened if Rosemary's father had followed the protocol. I guess I assumed too much. I had a telephone conversation with him and said to him, 'do you give your permission for this?' or I think I used the word 'blessing'. I said 'I know it can't make you happy that your daughter is planning to end her life but do you give your blessing?'

"He said yes. Now he later said, while thanking me for what I did, he said he didn't mean that but you know I think he just did not want the garda to come and arrest him. I operate very quietly. If he had just not said anything and that he just received the note from his daughter and didn't know anything about it which, I assumed, a logical person would do, then there would have been no problem."

Exoo said he had no regrets about helping Toole Gilhooley die but said it has changed his life. "She really was suffering and was very determined. I don't regret it but it really has complicated my life. I have had to close down my timeshare in Mexico where I took people who were ill and in their final days, but I can't do that any more."

Exoo, a Unitarian minister, said he could not travel abroad for fear of arrest and possible extradition. He also voiced worry about a trap being set if he ever travelled to Ireland.

"Let's put it this way. I'm not intending to leave the US so that some other country could extradite me or send me to Ireland. Given all the publicity over this, why wouldn't the garda set me up or the Catholic church or something? It would be difficult for us to go to Ireland."

In the five years since the controversial case, Exoo admitted that he was still involved in assisted euthanasia. "I still help people but really not from overseas. It's domestic people here. It's pretty much limited to a small group of people who I have had contact with in the past and they've contacted me. I don't advertise this in any way, shape or form.

"Because of what happened in Ireland, I am not able to be as kindly as I used to be to people. I have helped other people, sure, but here in the US.

The number has been very much cut down. It's two or three a year on average, something like that would be a reasonable guess. I don't keep records but it's been cut way back.

Before I would have been travelling multiple times a month.

"Some have been in contact with me for many years but they can't make up their minds. They keep waffling back and forth. When they get bad, they call me and when they get better they cancel. I'm a comfort to them."