Federico Fiuzzi's 2011 Ibogaine Death in Slovenia: New Details from Court Records
In February 2011, Italian national Federico Fiuzzi died following an ibogaine initiation ceremony associated with Sakrament prehoda, a religious community operating in Maribor, Slovenia. Fiuzzi was 28 or 29 years old, depending on the source. Slovenian newspapers covered the case that July, and the 2013 academic paper by Gregor Lesjak described the court proceedings as still unresolved at the time of writing.
What happened to the case after that was not publicly documented anywhere we could find. Ibogaine Club tracks ibogaine-related fatalities in our Fatality Tracker, including a dedicated entry for Fiuzzi's case, and an open legal outcome on a case this old is exactly the kind of gap we try to close. So we wrote directly to the District Court in Maribor and asked.
What Happened in 2011
According to the contemporaneous reporting, Fiuzzi died during an initiation ritual conducted by Sakrament prehoda ("Sacrament of Passage"), a group that used ibogaine hydrochloride as part of its ceremonies. Slovenske novice reported that an autopsy pointed to an excessive concentration of ibogaine in his system. Dnevnik reported that police filed criminal complaints against two members of the community: a 51-year-old leader and a 34-year-old priest.
Neither outlet followed up on what the criminal complaints produced. Lesjak's 2013 paper, published in the academic journal Teorija in praksa, confirmed the complaints had been filed but noted the court process had not concluded by the time of publication. For twelve years, that is where the public record stopped.
What the Maribor Court Told Ibogaine Club
We contacted the District Court in Maribor directly to ask what became of the case. Tomaž Grmovšek, Head of the Court's Investigative Department, replied in writing. Translated from Slovenian, his response reads:
"On October 4, 2013, the Maribor District State Prosecutor's Office filed a request to open a judicial investigation in connection with the death of Federico Fiuzzi, which allegedly occurred as a result of ibogaine use. Because the District State Prosecutor's Office subsequently withdrew the request for an investigation following the death of the person against whom it had been filed, criminal proceedings were never initiated. The court then returned to the Maribor District State Prosecutor's Office all documents that had been submitted to the court along with the request for an investigation."
— Tomaž Grmovšek, Head of the Investigative Department, District Court in Maribor
To be precise about what we received: this is an official written clarification from the court, not the underlying case file or investigative materials. The court confirmed the procedural outcome. It did not hand over the documents themselves.
What This Confirms, and What It Doesn't
The letter establishes four facts that were not previously documented in public reporting:
- On October 4, 2013, the Maribor prosecutor's office formally requested a judicial investigation into Fiuzzi's death.
- That request was later withdrawn, specifically because the person it targeted died.
- Criminal proceedings against anyone connected to the case were never formally opened.
- The case file was returned to the prosecutor's office, where it presumably remains closed.
What the letter does not do is name the person whose death triggered the withdrawal. We know the 2013 investigation request targeted at least one of the two individuals originally accused in 2011, but the court's response does not specify which one, or whether it was one of the two Dnevnik named at all.
This matters because a separate document in our records, a 2014 Constitutional Court decision, lists Marko Reza Resinovič as the representative of Sakrament prehoda in an unrelated petition challenging Slovenia's regulation of Tabernanthe iboga. Other sources we've found describe a Resinovič associated with the group as having died in 2022, nine years after the investigation request was withdrawn. If that identification and date are accurate, he is not the person the prosecutor's withdrawal refers to. We are not asserting who it was; we're flagging that the obvious guess doesn't hold up against the timeline, and the identity of the deceased figure named in the 2013 request remains the open question in this case.
One more distinction worth stating plainly: the prosecutor's 2013 filing describes Fiuzzi's death as having "allegedly" resulted from ibogaine use. That is prosecutorial language justifying an investigation request, not a finalized forensic determination. The autopsy finding reported by Slovenske novice in 2011, an elevated ibogaine concentration, remains the strongest evidence on record, but no court ever reached a verdict that would formally establish causation.
Why This Case Matters
Fifteen years after Fiuzzi's death, there has been no trial, no conviction, and now we know there was never even a formally opened criminal case. That's a different outcome than "investigation ongoing" or "charges dismissed," and it changes how the case should be described. Cases that stall in an informational vacuum tend to get miscited later, either as a conviction that never happened or as a matter fully dropped with no official action, when the real sequence is: investigation requested, then withdrawn due to a party's death, with the process never reaching court.
We're logging this correspondence in our Fatality Tracker entry for Fiuzzi as an official court record, alongside the original news coverage and Lesjak's academic paper. The case remains classified in our tracker as a reported, not confirmed, ibogaine fatality, reflecting that no court has formally determined ibogaine's role in his death. We'll update that entry if the identity of the deceased party in the 2013 filing becomes public.
Sources & Documentation
- Slovenske novice, "Italijan umrl na rokah slovenskih mazačev," July 26, 2011
- Dnevnik, "Usodni halucinogeni krst," July 26, 2011
- Gregor Lesjak, "(Sodno) izvedenstvo, religija in droge: primer Sakramenta Prehoda," Teorija in praksa, Vol. 50, No. 3–4 (2013), pp. 549–566
- Constitutional Court of the Republic of Slovenia, Decision U-I-34/12 (April 18, 2014)
- Written correspondence from Tomaž Grmovšek, Head of the Investigative Department, District Court in Maribor, to Ibogaine Club (2026)
- Full case details: Federico Fiuzzi, Maribor, Slovenia, 2011 in our Fatality Tracker