A great-grandmother who was cleared of murdering her husband in a suicide pact has accused the police of mistreating her.
Mavis Eccleston, 80, was acquitted last week.
Her husband of 60 years died after the couple took a cocktail of prescription drugs at their Staffordshire home in February last year.
Dennis Eccleston, 81, had been suffering from terminal bowel cancer.
Last night his widow revealed that police arrested her in her nightgown and slippers and held her in a cell at Stoke-on-Trent police station for 30 hours.
Her plight is set to reignite the assisted-dying debate.
Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying, which campaigns for the legalisation of assisted suicide, told The Mail on Sunday: “Our broken law has forced a dying man to end his own life in secret, and threatened his devoted wife of 60 years with life imprisonment for acting purely out of love.”
Staffordshire police said last night: “We are not aware of any concerns raised by Mavis Eccleston or her family about the way she was treated.”