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Activists Call on President Biden to End the Federal Death Penalty Before Leaving Office

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A conversation with Death Penalty Action Co-founder and Executive Director Abe Bonowitz. Now that Joe Biden is a lame duck president, activists are holding him accountable to make good on his promise to end the federal death penalty during his remaining six months as president. Biden’s election campaign in 2020 had pledged to end the federal death penalty and incentivize the remaining 27 states that still allow executions to do the same. While he made history as the first president in the United States to openly oppose the death penalty, there has been no movement to actually end federal executions during his nearly four years in office.

Video of Taliban 'executing Pakistan police'

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The Taliban has released a video of Pakistan policemen being executed by firing squad after being captured in the northwest, the Pakistani police have said.

A senior police official told the AFP news agency that the video [warning: graphic content] was filmed on June 1, when the Taliban besieged a police checkpost in Upper Dir, about 6km from the border with Afghanistan's Kunar province.

The footage, parts of which have been aired by Pakistani TV channel Geo and which is available on LiveLeak.com, shows at least 15 men standing on a hillside in traditional civilian dress with hands tied behind their backs.

A commander and other apparently Taliban fighters, also wearing shalwar khamis, but armed with Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades, stand in front of the apparent policemen, none of whom are wearing uniform.

The commander then delivers a brief speech, declaring the policemen enemies of Islam and deserving of death.

"These are the enemies of Allah's religion and have left Islam. Allah orders to kill such people," he says, speaking in the local Pashto language.

"We arrested them in fighting here. They killed six innocent children in [the northwestern valley of] Swat in the same way," he claims.

The commander and his fighters then open fire on the men. They later pump bullets at close-range into the bodies which are still moving.

'Pre-dawn attack'

Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said the video was taken in Upper Dir, where officials said Taliban crossed the border from Afghanistan to attack Pakistani police.

Mir Qasim Khan, police chief for Upper Dir district, put the number of victims in the video at 18, saying they were policemen and paramilitary police captured on June 1.

"It was a pre-dawn attack and that's why most of them are not wearing uniform," he said.

The Taliban was not reachable for comment on Monday.

Another police official said at the time that 500 fighters, including Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, took part in the attack, which began before dawn on June 1 and continued throughout the next day.

Taliban and other armed groups have carved out strongholds on both sides of the porous Afghanistan-Pakistan border, a region that the United States has called one of the most dangerous places in the world.

Upper Dir borders the region where the Pakistan military waged a major offensive against the local Taliban in Lower Dir, Buner and Swat in 2009.

Source: Al Jazeera, July 18, 2011

Related article:

Death Penalty News: Brutal Execution by Pakistani Army in Swat
Sep 30, 2010
The video appears to have been taken in the Swat Valley, where the Pakistani military opened a campaign last year to push back Taliban insurgents. The effort was widely praised by American officials and financed in large ...
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