GENEVA — Ludwig Minelli, the founder of Dignitas, one of Switzerland's best-known accompanied suicide groups that has helped thousands of people from around the world to take their own lives, has died through voluntary assisted dying, the group said.

Minelli died Saturday at age 92, it said.

A onetime correspondent in Switzerland for the respected German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, Minelli earned a law degree in 1981, aged nearly 50. A few years later he was admitted to the bar and argued in defense of his group and beliefs in court.

He championed values such as freedom of choice, human rights and the idea that “the state serves the citizen, rather than the citizen the state,” Dignitas said.

Minelli founded the group after a disagreement within EXIT (Deutsche Schweiz), another leading Sw

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