A 73-year year-old man, thought to be the chairman of right-to-die campaign group Coöperatie Laatste Wil, has been arrested on suspicion of assisting in suicides and being a member of a criminal organisation, the public prosecution office announced on Wednesday.

It is not clear if Coöperatie Laatste Wil (CWL) is the criminal organisation in question but the house of its chairman Jos van Wijk was searched on Tuesday as well as the house of an unidentified person, Dutch media reported.

The public prosecutor defines a criminal organisation as ‘structurally aimed at committing or intenting to commit a crime’, in this case carrying out or assisting in euthanasia.

CWL earlier suspended meet-ups at members’ homes in the wake of an investigation into another man who is suspected of distributing suicide powder to hundreds of people online between November 2018 until June this year.

That man, a 28-year-old from Eindhoven who was named as Alex S and said to be a CWL member, was arrested in August and has been remanded in custody.

Police began to investigate Alex S after the death of a woman in Best this year, but he had already attracted the attention of local broadcaster Omroep Brabant as far back as 2018.

He is thought to have sold the ‘suicide powder’ via online market website Marktplaats for as little as €20 plus postage. At least six people are thought to have died after taking it.

Such substances are not banned in the Netherlands, partly because ministers fear that this would put the names of products in the public domain, but euthanasia is tightly controlled and only a doctor can help someone end their life, under strict conditions.