London:
A BBC presenter who confessed on TV to have smothered his friend and lover dying of AIDS has been released after being questioned by the British police on suspicion of murder.
While Ray Gosling, a formerly well known film maker who has now fallen on bad times claimed it was a mercy killing, the case has rocked a country already grappling with the issue of legalising assisted suicide.
"He was in pain. He'd got AIDS, there was no cure, it was in the early days, and there was no relief for the pain. And I went through those things with the doctors and when he first got AIDS we had a pact - he was my lover, he wasn't my partner, he was my 'bit on the side', but we had a wonderful, wonderful love affair, and we said if it comes to that, I don't want to live. 'You, I rely on you, Ray, to finish it.' And he was in terrible, terrible, terrible pain, and I finished it. It's nobody's business, it was a private pact, and I only told it because other people had told me they were in the same situation and I felt I ought to own up. There's a law that's written in law books, and there's a law in your heart, and for me there was a law of the pact we had between each other. That was a law too," said Gosling.
Ray Gosling, discharged by the police after a day and a half of questioning says he has no regrets. The Nottingham police had arrested him on suspicion of murder after Gosling made a confession on TV saying he killed his lover.
The fact that there is no charge against means Gosling has not revealed - as he had insisted - the name of the person killed.
His confession has got many up in arms saying there is a very thin line between murder and assisted suicide.
"This was an intentional murder without the man's immediate consent and that under British law is murder," said Peter Saunders, Care Not Killing.
His close friends say it happened 20 years ago but the question that leads to some scepticism is why Gosling decided to go public with it now.
This case has added fire to an already fiery debate in the UK, on whether to legalise euthanasia, as is the case in some other European countries.