Nov. 2
LIBYA:
Libya's Gaddafi wants death penalty scrapped
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has called again for the death penalty to be
banned in his country but stressed the decision should not result from
pressure from abroad.
The end of the death penalty in Libya would spare the lives of 5 Bulgarian
nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to death last May after being
found guilty of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with
the deadly HIV virus.
The European Union and the United States have joined Bulgaria in
denouncing the sentences as unacceptable. Libya, which has forged closer
ties with the West in the past year, had promised a quick solution to the
issue.
"Cancelling the death penalty should not be the result of economic,
political or security pressures like the ones piled on Turkey to win a
European Union membership," Gaddafi said.
Such a decision "is linked to progress ... in society. It is one of the
fruits of a civilised mind", he said in a speech to a gathering of judges,
lawyers, law university teachers and students on Monday night.
Gaddafi said he had made similar pleas to the top executive and
legislative body, but it had so far refused to accept them.
"I had decided to cancel that penalty but the People's Congress did not
accept it because they are not convinced and also because society has yet
to reach a stage of ... civilisation to ban the death penalty," he said.
(source: Reuters)
ENGLAND/THAILAND:
MP in bid to save death row Briton Nov 2 2004
A former Bedworth man on death row in a Thai jail may be spared execution.
North Warwickshire MP Mike O'Brien, a former Foreign Office minister, says
he intends to intervene in the case of convicted drug trafficker Anthony
Flanaghan.
Flanaghan, aged 34, who was born in Nuneaton and raised in Newtown Road,
Bedworth, was sentenced to death by a Bangkok court after being found
guilty of illegal drug possession with intent to sell.
Flanaghan had denied the charges and says he plans to appeal.
MP Mr O'Brien, whose North Warwickshire constituency includes Bedworth,
said today: "I will be making representations that the death sentence be
commuted to a lesser sentence, such as life imprisonment.
"I don't believe in the death penalty and it is not right that people
should be executed but, having said that, if you go to another country and
break their laws, you take the risks."
A Foreign Office spokeswoman said the government would also be making
approaches. She said: "Our policy is to make representations against the
use of a death sentence where it is imposed against a British citizen.
"Obviously we are going to be seeking advice from Mr Flanaghan's lawyer.
We have to wait for all appeals to go through."
Flanaghan, a former pupil at Bedworth's Nicholas Chamberlaine School, was
raised in Bedworth by his grandparents, both of whom are now dead.
He has told British Embassy officials in Bangkok that he has no relatives
in the UK.
A former school friend of Flanaghan's, who did not want to be named, told
the Evening Telegraph today: "He had a girlfriend in the town called
Jackie, and he'd apparently told her that he would prefer the death
penalty rather than spend the rest of his life in that jail."
(source: ic Coventry)
