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California is transferring everyone on death row at San Quentin prison to other places, as it tries to reinvent the state's most notorious facility as a rehabilitation centre. Many in this group will now have new freedoms. But they are also asking why they've been excluded from the reform - and whether they'll be safe in new prisons. Keith Doolin still remembers the day in 2019 when workers came to dismantle one of the United States' most infamous death chambers.

Council of Europe head appeals Morsi death sentence

Former Egyptian president M. Morsi
Former Egyptian president M. Morsi
The head of the Council of Europe has written to Egypt's Grand Mufti asking him not to approve hundreds of death sentences hanging over jailed dissidents - including former president, Mohamed Morsi.

Thorbjorn Jagland wrote to Professor Shawki Abdel-Karim Allam on Thursday in the hope that capital punishment will not be applied to Morsi and over 100 Muslim Brotherhood activists.

Egyptian law requires death penalties to be referred to the Grand Mufti, the highest religious official in the country.

"The Council of Europe is firmly opposed to the death penalty as a cruel and inhumane punishment which denies human dignity and integrity and can never be undone," Jagland wrote in the letter.

Last year, hundreds of Egyptians were sentenced to death but rulings on only a few dozen were actually upheld, the rest converted into jail sentences of 25 years.

Morsi and 12 codefendants were sentenced to 20 years in prison last month for allegedly mobilizing supporters to "intimidate, detain and torture" dozens of anti-Morsi protesters during clashes outside eastern Cairo's Ittihadiya presidential palace in December 2012.

The former president currently faces multiple criminal trials on charges that include espionage and "insulting the judiciary" -- charges he says are politically motivated.

Source: World Bulletin, May 29, 2015

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