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Biden Fails a Death Penalty Abolitionist’s Most Important Test

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The mystery of Joe Biden’s views about capital punishment has finally been solved. His decision to grant clemency to 37 of the 40 people on federal death row shows the depth of his opposition to the death penalty. And his decision to leave three of America’s most notorious killers to be executed by a future administration shows the limits of his abolitionist commitment. The three men excluded from Biden’s mass clemency—Dylann Roof, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Robert Bowers—would no doubt pose a severe test of anyone’s resolve to end the death penalty. Biden failed that test.
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Worsening human rights situation in Iran: European Parliament

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Parliament expressed its grave concern at "the steadily deteriorating human rights situation in Iran". It specifically refers to the growing number of political prisoners, the sustained high number of executions, including of juveniles, widespread torture, unfair trials, exorbitant sums demanded for bail, and heavy restrictions on freedom of information, expression, assembly, belief, education and movement.

MEPs strongly condemn the use of the death penalty in Iran and call on the Iranian authorities to institute a moratorium on executions, pending the abolition of the death penalty. They deeply deplore the lack of fairness and transparency of the judicial process and also the lack of appropriate professional training for those involved in it.

Parliament calls on the Iranian authorities to release all political prisoners, including the political leaders Mir-Hussein Mosaic and Medic Karrabul, the human rights lawyers Nasrin Stouten and Abdolfattah Soltani, the student activists Bahareh Hedayat, Abdollah Momeni, Mahdieh Golroo and Majid Tavakoli, the journalist Abdolreza Tajik, Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani, the filmmakers Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoul and all the other individuals listed in the report by UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, Ahmed Shaheed.

The Iranian Government should immediately allow Mr Shaheed to enter Iran, to address its human rights crisis. The government’s complete failure to co-operate with him and its continued refusal to allow him access are "an indication that Iran has no intention of taking meaningful steps to improve the human rights situation", says the resolution.

European companies should live up to their corporate social responsibilities by not supplying goods, technologies and services which Iran could use to control and censor information and communication flows and to track down citizens, notably human rights defenders, MEPs add.

Source: European Parliament News, November 17, 2011
Location: Iran
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