Lover confesses to mercy killing that inspired film

The mystery has intrigued Spain for years. Ramon Sampedro, a sailor paralysed in a diving accident as a young man, ended his life seven years ago, after being bedridden for 30 years. The person who supplied him with the lethal cyanide cocktail remained anonymous to avoid prosecution. The story caused an impassioned debate in Spain about euthanasia, and inspired an award-winning movie, The Sea Inside, strongly tipped for an Oscar.

The mystery has intrigued Spain for years. Ramon Sampedro, a sailor paralysed in a diving accident as a young man, ended his life seven years ago, after being bedridden for 30 years. The person who supplied him with the lethal cyanide cocktail remained anonymous to avoid prosecution. The story caused an impassioned debate in Spain about euthanasia, and inspired an award-winning movie, The Sea Inside, strongly tipped for an Oscar.

This week, Sampedro's accomplice revealed her identity. Protected by the statute of limitations, Sampedro's female companion in his final months confessed that she mixed the poison draught that killed him, and set the video that recorded his dying moments.

"I did it for love," Ramona Maneiro told a television chatshow on Monday. "I measured the cyanide. I put it in the water. I put the straw in the glass and I put it where he could sip it. I was his hands. I did what he asked."

Ramon Sampedro's fight to end a life he considered meaningless captured the sympathy of a nation and provided the plot for Alejandro Amenabar's hit film Mar Adentro with the Spanish heartthrob, Javier Bardem. It was judged best foreign film in the critic's choice at Los Angeles on Monday.

It also took best foreign film award at September's Venice film festival and is tipped for awards at the Golden Globes and the Oscars. The title Mar Adentro is from one of many love poems Sampedro tapped out with a stick in his mouth.

Ms Maneiro was charged with assisting a suicide in 1998, but released for lack of proof. Sampedro, unable to die without help, ingeniously divided the necessary tasks among friends to protect them from Spain's anti-euthanasia laws. She has spoken out now "to stop people speculating who did it", she said on the show. "He told me something important; that when he had drunk the cyanide, I should not kiss him on the lips."

Ms Maneiro said she stayed behind the video camera, murmuring endearments as the poison took effect, staying with the plan Sampedro had devised.

"I didn't want him to go in silence. I called him 'darling' and things like that." He was expected to slip into unconsciousness, but his final moments, captured on video and recreated in the emotional climax of Amenabar's film, were less pleasant. "I had to go to the bathroom, and I felt bad afterwards," Ms Maneiro said.

Her revelations did not surprise Manuela Sampedro, the dead man's sister-in-law who nursed him in their cottage in Galicia for 30 years before he moved to the flat where he died. "We don't reproach her or think she should be punished, because she did what Ramon asked. But she wasn't the only woman who fell in love with him."

Sampedro, despite his infirmity, was flirtatious and affectionate, even charismatic. Bardem transmits these traits brilliantly, demonstrating Sam-pedro's conviction that love springs not from the body but from the brain. But Sampedro's quest for death, his passionate yearnings poured into essays and poems, revealed his frustrated desire to be not just a brain but a body too.

"Ramon's contradiction is that someone so vital, who engages immediately with everyone, seeks his own death," Amenabar said. That conflict drives the film, and, in real life, inspired acts of bravery from those who loved him.