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| Yahya Jammeh |
There is growing international criticism over plans by Gambia's hard-line president to execute all of the country's death-row inmates within the next couple of weeks.
Gambia's leader, President Yahya Jammeh, has long faced criticism for his human rights record. In a recent speech marking the end of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, the president vowed to put to death all prisoners facing the death penalty by mid-September, as a way to curb crime.
"By the middle of next month, all the death sentences would have been carried out to the letter. There is no way my government will allow 99 percent of the population to be held to ransom by criminals," Jammeh said in a speech on Aug. 19, broadcast on Gambian national television the following day.
Despite pressure from human rights groups, his African peers and Western powers, including the U.S., Jammeh has already begun to carry out the executions.
In a statement Monday, the government said nine inmates were executed by firing squad Sunday — six civilians and three soldiers. These were the first executions in Gambia in nearly 30 years.
Paule Rigaud, Amnesty International's deputy Africa director, says there are 38 more death-row inmates, including some that her group classifies as political prisoners.
"We fear strongly for their safety now, that they could be the next ones to be executed," she says.
Amnesty International called the executions a hugely retrograde step on a continent where many countries are abolishing capital punishment.
The government of neighboring Senegal says two of those executed recently were Senegalese, and a third remains on death row.
Visibly furious, Senegalese President Macky Sall joined international calls for Gambia to halt the planned executions.
Source: npr, August 29, 2012