Reprieve delivers justice and saves lives, from death row to Guantánamo Bay.
Reprieve delivers justice and saves lives, from death row to Guantánamo Bay.
It would be inaccurate to characterise Democratic politicians in the US as anti-Death penalty and pro human rights: Bill Clinton interrupted his 1992 Presidential campaign to sign the death warrant of lobotomised Ricky Ray Rector when he was still Governor of Arkansas and President Obama’s promise to close Guantanamo Bay has yet to be fulfilled.
Yet social conservatives who fall on the Republican side of the aisle tend to be uncompromising in their support for capital punishment and human rights abuses perpetrated in the name of ‘national security’. This is why the Republican wins in the US elections held ...
Amongst all the fallout from President Obama’s Nobel Prize win, my favourite is the recent suggestion by a Chadian Minister that the Norwegians made a mistake.
Rather sycophantically, Environment Minister Ali Souleymane Dabye went on to say that President Idriss Deby, who has ruled Chad for 19 years, should have beaten President Obama in the race for the Nobel.
The comment was greeted with mirth by many Chadians, and a mischievous Cameroonian journalist, the aptly named Innocent Ebodé of the Voix du Tchad, likened such a competition to a race between Olympic world-record-holder Usain Bolt and a one-legged runner ...
Death Penalty volunteer Laura Vignoles watches the All Parliamentary Group Debate on the abolition of the death penalty.
In an All Party Parliamentary Group Debate called by long-term Reprieve supporter Alistair Carmichael (MP for Orkney and Shetlands), the global abolition of the death penalty received a resounding and encouraging show of support.
In an hour and a half discussion politicians representing all three major political parties showed a remarkable consensus of opinion – the speech by DUP Member for East Londonderry, Gregory Campbell, providing the dissenting opinion which allowed the gathering to be accurately described as a debate.
The seven members ...
Singer David Knoplfer and former member of the band Dire Straits has been so moved by the case of Akmal Shaikh that he is dedicating the Rabbit Song every night on his forth-coming tour to the mentally ill Briton facing execution in China.
Like David, Akmal has composed and recorded a song about rabbits. Knoplfer describes the concept behind Akmal’s song as more ‘ambitious and grandiose’ than his own, as Akmal wholeheartedly believed that his song would usher in world peace.
The lyrics are ‘Come little rabbit come and play, Come little rabbit let us sing’. Reprieve believes this ...
Given that China doles out 140 death sentences each week, it is not surprising that every now and then one makes the international news.
Indeed, the cases have been making more headlines than normal of late, with half a dozen rioters in Urumqi scheduled to die, and another six people condemned in a crackdown on crime syndicates.
However, perhaps the case that strikes closest to home is the imminent execution of the bipolar British citizen, Akmal Shaikh.
The case raises stark questions to which there are no immediate answers. How could a man be edging so close to the death ...
£40,000 per juvenile on death row in Iran: cheap at twice the price?
A human rights lawyer in Iran has launched an appeal to raise the necessary financial compensation to save the lives of four juvenile offenders facing execution in Iran. Under Iranian law (based on the Sharia code), families of the victim can pardon the convicted person in return for a sum of ‘blood money’.
The amounts of money asked for the victims’ family are no nominal figures. It is extremely rare that death row prisoners can be pardoned in this manner, because of the vast sums involved ...
On October 8, seven Sahrawi human rights defenders were arrested by Moroccan police at the Mohamed V Airport in Casablanca, Morocco and remain in an undisclosed location, according to the Association Sahraouie des Victimes des Violations Graves des Droits Humains (ASVDH). The human rights defenders were returning from a trip to Algeria where they visited Sahrawi refugee camps in the southwest of the country. The group was arrested immediately after their plane landed at the airport in Casablanca.
This arrest was overseen by several security agencies, led by the military intelligence service, called: DGED, according to the sources of the ...
A report just released by the Death Penalty Information Center concludes that states are wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on the death penalty, draining state budgets during the economic crisis and diverting funds from more effective anti-violence programs.
Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, 41 of the 50 states have had either no executions or an average of less than 1 execution per year. Of the remaining 9 states, only 5 have averaged more than 2 executions per year and only 1 (Texas) averaged more than 3.
Meanwhile, the extra costs of the death penalty, beyond life ...
John Thompson was 40 years old when he walked out of the Angola State Penitentiary in 2003 after spending nearly 18 years on death row for murder.
A jury acquitted him of all charges after a stunning disclosure from Orleans Parish District Attorney Harry Connick’s office.
In 1995, lead prosecutor Jerry Deagan told fellow prosecutor Mike Riehlmann he was dying of liver cancer and had a confession — he had concealed blood evidence that could possibly prove Thompson’s innocence. After Deagan died, Riehlmann said nothing of his friend’s confession for five years while Thompson sat in a cell ...
"Please don't allow them to kill me for a crime that I know I did not commit."
These are the words of Linda Carty, a British grandmother sentenced to death in 2001 for the kidnap and murder of a young mother in Texas.
They were spoken in a recorded message broadcast to London's Trafalgar Square in September. It was the last throw of the dice for Carty's legal team, a publicity stunt designed to raise awareness of her plight in the hope that the UK might ask for her sentence to be commuted.
It made no difference ...
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