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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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Sudan: nine men executed

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April 13, 2009: Sudanese authorities executed nine men from Darfur for murder, state media and a police source said.

The state news agency SUNA later confirmed the men were hanged at Kober prison in Khartoum and named them.

The decapitated body of newspaper editor, Mohamed Taha Mohamed Ahmed, was found on a dirt road in Khartoum in September 2006. The men were found guilty in November 2007.

Ahmed was a journalist and owner of the Arabic-language al-Wifaq newspaper.

During the trial the lead police investigator, Abdul Rahim Ahmed Abdul Rahim, said the defendants' motives were "political, ethnic and financial".

Abdul Rahim said the defendants had been infuriated by an article in Taha's paper. A defence lawyer said the article had played down reports about rape in Darfur and used unflattering language to describe Darfurian women.

Source: Reuters, 13/04/2009
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