ROME, Feb 3: The father of an Italian woman who has been in a coma for 17 years defied the Vatican and Italy’s centre-right government on Tuesday, moving her to a private clinic where a feeding tube keeping her alive will be removed.

Eluana Englaro, 38, has been in a vegetative state since a 1992 car crash. Italy’s top court ruled last year that she can be allowed to die but the decision was contested by politicians and prelates and split public opinion in this Catholic country.

In the early hours of Tuesday the woman was taken by ambulance to a hospice in the northern city of Udine, the only one in Italy that has agreed to stop feeding and hydrating her.

Anti-euthanasia activists carrying bread and water – which have become the symbol of the protest against removing the tube — tried to prevent the vehicle from leaving.

“In a few days Italy will execute its first death sentence since 1948,” said Alfredo Mantovano, an Interior Ministry undersecretary.

The government says that removing the feeding tube amounts to euthanasia, which is illegal in Italy. Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, the Vatican’s equivalent of a health minister, said in an interview with La Repubblica daily: “To withdraw food and water from her means only one thing, and that is deliberately killing her.”

Eluana’s father, Beppino Englaro, has battled his way through Italy’s courts for more than 10 years to allow his daughter to die.—Reuters