[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

June 26


GHANA:

Public Lets Execution Call Pass


A senior Ghanaian justice department official has expressed surprise that
the government has failed to ban capital punishment, implicitly censuring
lawmakers for their recent endorsement of two new pro-death penalty judges
to the Supreme Court.

The current law permitting the death penalty was "obnoxious", the deputy
attorney general, Kwame Osei-Bempah, told IPS. "There is no reason why it
should remain on our law books."

He added: "Unfortunately, no government has had the political will to
raise the issue for discussion."

The official's remarks were made after four presidential appointees to the
Supreme Court were grilled in a public vetting process by the Appointments
Committee of Parliament on May 27. All four former appeal court judges
were approved as new Supreme Court justices.

2 of the justices -- Rose Owusu and Paul Baffoe-Bonnie -- told lawmakers
they did not see anything wrong with the death penalty. Justice Owusu
specifically endorsed the Biblical saying "A tooth for a tooth".

"He who kills must be killed," she insisted, claiming that the Bible was
categorical on the issue when Jesus said, "Anyone who draws the sword must
die by the sword."

Justice Owusu contended that although there had been reviews of past death
sentences -- the last death sentences carried out in Ghana was in 1993 --
this had not had a positive influence on the condemned.

She added that crime could only be fought by being tough on offenders. The
state had a constitutional mandate to see a death sentence was carried
out.

Justice Baffoe-Bonnie expressed more muted pro-capital punishment views.

But two Supreme Court nominees -- Justices Jones Dotse and Anim Yeboah --
said they supported the abolition of the death penalty.

Both raised the possibility of judicial error and innocent people being
executed.

"Some innocent people who have suffered from the death penalty only to be
exonerated later," said Justice Jones Victor Dotse.

This view was also supported by Justice Anim Yeboah, adding that the death
penalty "did not address the critical issue of deterring crime".

In an interview with IPS after the hearing, Accra civil servant, Peter
Bonsu suggested Justice Dotse may have been alluding to some specific
Ghanaian cases when he spoke of the danger of sending innocents to their
death.

"In 1979, General Afrifa and other generals were executed by firing squad
for some spurious political crimes. But years later their bodies were
exhumed and given befitting burials ..." Bonsu said.

General Afrifa, a former military head of state, was executed together
with 6 other Army officers during a military coup. They were condemned to
death by a so-called People's Court. When President John Agyekum Kufuor
came to power he set up a Seven Member Committee under Marshal M.A. Otu to
review the case. This recommended the reburial of the generals.

Attempts by IPS to get MPs to comment on the justices' views on the death
penalty were met by a wall of silence. "It is a very controversial issue,"
one MP said on condition of anonymity.

Nana Oye Lithur, African Regional Coordinator of the Commonwealth Human
Rights Initiative (CHRI) expressed surprise at the little public outrage
voiced over Justice Owusu's strong support for carrying out death
sentences.

Lithur attributed this to the fact that the death penalty was not a
"priority" issue for the government. This was because "no one talks about
it," she explained.

The CHRI had also not given the death penalty serious attention, she
conceded.

But this was about to change. The CHRI was "committed to initiate a
project to sensitise the public on what it (the death penalty) means and
why it should not remain on the country's law books," she told IPS.

Some time ago, Amnesty International had raised the death penalty issue in
the public domain but little had resulted, she said.

Bonsu said that Ghanaians needed to be made aware that although the death
penalty was not being carried out, the punishment still remained on the
statute books.

Justice department officials were unable to provide IPS with current
statistics on the number of recent death sentences passed by Ghanaian
courts. There were also no readily-available statistics on the number
currently on death row awaiting reprieve.

Records kept by the police and passed to the attorney general's office
were not the best, explained one official, declining to be named.

Ghana still retains the death penalty for 3 crimes, armed robbery, treason
and murder with intent.

The last executions were in July 1993, when 12 convicted of armed robbery
or murder were executed by firing squad.

Ghana abstained during the U.N. General Assembly Dec 2007 vote on a
resolution calling for a worldwide moratorium on executions.

(source: IPS)






AUSTRALIA:

Ban urged to cut death penalty risk


POLICE should be banned from giving information to authorities in another
country if it could lead to Australians being condemned to death, a
parliamentary committee has warned.

The move by the cross-party Treaties Committee follows the outcry over the
Bali 9 affair where the Australian Federal Police passed on information
that helped Indonesian police to arrest Australians, some of whom were
then condemned to death.

The committee said the Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Act required
the Government to refuse a request for assistance from another country
that might lead to the death penalty unless the Attorney-General or the
Minister for Home Affairs believed that help should be granted for a
particular reason.

It said information passed on through general police-to-police contact
could have the same effect.

The committee said that in some countries successful drug trafficking
investigations were very likely to result in the death penalty.

The issue arose during the committee's examination of a new agreement on
mutual assistance with the United Arab Emirates.

The committee noted that Australia had memorandums of understanding on
co-operation on counterterrorism activities with 13 countries: Indonesia,
the Philippines, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Brunei, Fiji, Papua New
Guinea, East Timor, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkey.

"The texts of these memoranda of understanding are all security classified
and not in the public domain," it said.

"The committee remains concerned that information shared lawfully through
police-to-police assistance or other intelligence and security
co-operation arrangements may result in the imposition of the death
penalty."

The committee also wants the government to institute a tracking system to
maintain contact with anyone extradited from Australia to another country.

Committee chairman Kelvin Thompson said it was not good enough for
Australia to extradite people and simply wash its hands of them.

"If someone disappears or dies in custody after we send them overseas,
people are going to want to know about that."

A spokesman for Attorney-General Robert McClelland said the Government
would consider the committee's recommendations in due course, in the
context of the rights of individuals and national security.

(source: The Age)