'Locked-in' dad wins final fight

A former Dubai civil engineer who lost his right-to-die battle last week passed away yesterday of natural causes.

Tony Nicklinson, 58, suffered from locked-in syndrome after suffering a massive stroke during a business trip to Athens in 2005.

The dad-of-two was left paralysed and for the past seven years has only been able to communicate through a computer system - similar to world-famous physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking - by blinking.

He died at his home in Wiltshire in England after his health rapidly deteriorated. He had been refusing to eat and contracted pneumonia.

Nicklinson’s lawyers Bindmans LLP said: “This is to notify you of the sad death of Tony Nicklinson at approximately 10am this morning.”

His family also put out a series of messages on Twitter - one of which said: “Before he died, he asked us to tweet: ‘Goodbye world the time has come, I had some fun’.”

Tony met his wife, Jane, in Dubai at a Dionne Warwick concert held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in October 1984.

Earlier this year she told 7DAYS: “We married in July 1986. We had left Dubai by then but returned again in 1987 and my eldest daughter Lauren was born at Al Zahra hospital.”

Of the UAE, Jane said: “Tony loved it there and it was a huge part of our lives. We had many friends and a great life. Just before he was taken ill he had been made vice chairman of The Arabian Gulf Rugby Football Union, the governing body of rugby in the Gulf. It was a dream come true for him as rugby was his passion.”

myra@7days.ae