Sydney - Australian euthanasia campaigner Phillip Nitschke has been refused entry to Britain, where he was to give "suicide tutorials," news reports said Saturday. Nitschke, 61, told the Australian broadcaster ABC that he was detained at London's Heathrow Airport.

"They believe public meetings that we have described that we are going ahead with are an offence against British law," he said.

It was the first time the founder of the euthanasia lobby group Exit International has been refused entry to Britain.

Nitschke presided over the world's first legal lethal injection in 1996 and helped in the suicides of four people before a law allowing assisted suicides was repealed by the Canberra parliament.

Suicide is not illegal in Britain, but it's a criminal offence to abet it - as it is in Australia.(dpa)