A man arrested this week suspected of involvement in the theft and leaking of a medical file on injured ex-Formula One champion Michael Schumacher was found hanged in his cell on Wednesday, prosecutors said.
The man, whose identity was not disclosed, worked as an executive at a Swiss helicopter air rescue company, Rega, which organized the German sportsman’s transport from a French hospital to Switzerland in June, the Zurich prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
The man, arrested on Tuesday and interrogated by police, had denied any wrongdoing. He was being detained in a Zurich police holding cell, the statement said.
He was found hanged when officers came to bring him breakfast before a scheduled hearing before a judge.
According to an initial investigation, no one else was involved in his hanging, the prosecutor’s office said.
Zurich police said they had spotted no signs the man was mentally unstable or suicidal.
“Out of respect for human dignity, detained people keep their clothing in the cells. There are also sheets in the cells, so there’s always a risk that we cannot eliminate,” police spokesman Werner Schaub said, without revealing what the man had used to hang himself.
“We are at a loss for words and deeply shocked,” Sabine Kehm, spokeswoman for Schumacher’s family, said in an e-mail.
Schumacher sustained serious head injuries in a skiing accident at Meribel on Dec. 29 last year and spent more than five months in hospital in the French city of Grenoble before being transferred to Switzerland on June 16.
The former champion driver, long a resident of the wealthy Alpine nation, was brought by ambulance amid the utmost secrecy to a cutting-edge unit in the CHUV Hospital in Lausanne.
However, word soon got out that some of his medical records had been stolen and that the thief was attempting to sell them to different media for 50,000 euros (US$67,000).
French prosecutors last month tracked down the IP address of the computer used in the theft of the medical records to Zurich-based Rega, which is the main operator of air ambulances in Switzerland.
The company confirmed that it had received a medical file to enable it to provide a medical opinion on the merits of the transfer operation, but denied any wrongdoing.
According to Swiss media reports, the data thief had exercised little caution.
He used the pseudonym “Kagemusha,” or “Shadow Warrior,” inspired by a Japanese historical film, the Tages Anzeiger daily reported in its online edition.
However, he sent his offers to sell the medical documents, along with extracts of the records, via unencrypted e-mails from computers at Rega’s offices, making it easy for police to track the IP address to the company, it added.
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