Death Penalty News

The Kenyan government has been actively involved in seeking a resolution to Munyakho's case, where he is set for execution after he accidentally killed a Saudi colleague in an altercation The government has successfully negotiated the postponement of the execution of Stephen Munyakho, a Kenyan national who has been incarcerated in Saudi Arabia for over a decade. Munyakho, who was set to face the death penalty on November 26, 2024, has been granted an additional year as both parties work towards a resolution.

The family of Steve Munyakho, a Kenyan migrant in a Saudi Arabian prison has renewed appeal for donations to help pay the Sh150 million court fine to secure his release. Munyakho has been a jailbird, languishing in several prisons in the Arab country for the last thirteen years after he was convicted of killing his workmate where he is currently incarcerated at Shimeisi Prison in Makkah region.

NAIROBI, Kenya, May 13 – Saudi Arabia has acceded to Kenya’s request to postpone the execution of Stephen Munyakho that was set for Wednesday to allow for further negotiations between all parties. According to Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Korir Sing’Oei, Kenya will be engaging stakeholders in Nairobi and Riyadh, including religious leaders, to agree on the next urgent steps.

Tropical reefs, safaris, the pyramids: LGBT travel companies deliver dream vacations, even to places where being out and proud could land you in prison. A romantic island getaway in the Maldives. A safari in Kenya. A visit to the pyramids in Egypt. Apart from being popular on bucket lists, these places have one thing in common: Their destinations have strict anti-LGBT legislation. In the Maldives, gay sex may be punished with lashes and up to eight years in prison. In Kenya, it can bring a sentence of up to 14 years. And in Egypt, the authorities are known to throw people in jail for simply waving a rainbow flag. Paradoxically, these trips are also all offered by travel companies founded by and catering to members of the LGBTQ community. In interviews, the founders of four of these companies, which take a combined total of 3000 tourists — most of them American — abroad each year, said they were providing a safe way to meet a growing demand for trips to countries that criminalise LGBT p...

NAIROBI, June 22 (Reuters) - Mohamed Ali doesn't believe gay Africans exist. He says homosexuality is a Western invention imposed on the continent. Openly gay Africans are liars seeking visas to the West or money from rights groups, he adds. Ali is a member of Kenya's parliament. He is desperate to follow neighbour Uganda by unleashing a sweeping legislative crackdown on LGBT people. Even if he happened to be sick in intensive care, he would ask to be dragged to parliament to approve it. "I will ask them to take me to vote for that, to kick them out, kick LGBT people out of Kenya completely," he said. Weeks after Uganda enacted one of the most draconian anti-LGBT laws on Earth, Kenya could be poised to follow suit with a similarly formulated bill that punishes gay sex with prison or even death in some cases, according to a draft of the law and two lawmakers backing it in parliament.

Sub-Saharan African countries have seen a 67% fall in capital punishment, from 33 in 2021 to just 11 last year, and a 20% drop in death penalty sentences, from 373 to 298 over the same period, Amnesty International (AI) said in its latest report. South Sudan executed five people - down from nine in 2021 - and Somalia, which in 2021 carried out 21 executions, only had six last year. Botswana which had executed one person in 2021, didn't conduct any last year. In the whole African continent, recorded death sentences decreased by 20%, from 373 in 2021 to 298 in 2022.  Death sentences recorded in 16 countries last year, down three from 2021.  According to the report, the 20% drop in recorded death sentences was due to notable reductions in the following countries in 2022 compared to 2021:  Botswana (6 to 1); Cameroon (4 to 0); Democratic Republic of the Congo (81 to 76); Malawi (11 to 0); Mali (48 to 8); Somalia (27 to 10); Sierra Leone (23 to 0); South Sudan (10 to 4); Sudan...

A man who blocked a motor vehicle using his motorcycle and robbed the occupants of mobile phones, cash and personal effects in Nairobi has been sentenced to hang. Michael Odhiambo was handed the death penalty by senior principal magistrate Philip Mutua of Kibera law courts after he was convicted for three counts of robbery with violence contrary to section 295 as read with section 296 (2) of the penal code. The convict had sought a lenient sentence claiming he is a family man with dependants but Mutua said the law provides for only one penalty – death sentence for the offence. Odhiambo had robbed Peter Kenyatta of Sh5000 and a mobile phone worth Sh14,000 on December 30, 2015. He also robbed John Karani and Peter Gichuhi of different amounts of money and mobile phones. He blocked their car claiming they had knocked down a bodaboda rider in a hit-and-run accident before terrorizing them while robbing them in broad daylight. He was joined by others including Stanley Amos Misiko who was ch...

The debate on the death penalty is a subject that is cross-cutting on various dimensions of the law. There has been concerted global lobbying towards its abolishment. This is evidenced by, among other things, the passage of the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Aiming at the Abolition of the Death Penalty and a similar move being made by other regional entities such as the EU through its Protocols No 6 and 13 to the EU Convention on Human Rights. Similarly, the African front has not been left behind in this momentous tide of change, with Sierra Leone becoming the latest and the 23rd African country to abolish capital punishment. The Supreme Court of Kenya (SCOK), in 2017, passed a landmark decision on the death penalty—a decision which was then envisioned to be the herald of a new dawn for Kenya’s Criminal Justice System (CJS) in this area. However, new guidelines on that decision, issued by the same court in July 2021, appear to tes...

LAST AUGUST a judge sentenced Brenton Tarrant, who murdered 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, to life in prison with no possibility of parole. It was the first time a court in New Zealand had meted out such a sentence. Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister and a liberal icon, took grim satisfaction in the punishment. “Today I hope is the last where we have any cause to hear or utter the name of the terrorist,” she said. Lifelong imprisonment seems to be spreading as a punishment for the worst crimes. In 2019 Serbia passed “Tijana’s law” in response to the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl. It allows judges to sentence some murderers and rapists of children to life in prison without parole. In June last year, after the gang rape of a 13-year-old girl by soldiers, Colombia overturned its constitutional ban on life sentences. Britain’s government recently proposed legislation to reduce the age at which judges can impose “whole-life” sentences from 21 to 18. The most heinous crime...

The Malawi Supreme Court of Appeal abolished the death penalty in April, the most notable decision against capital punishment since the South African Constitutional Court found the penalty unconstitutional in 1995 . The Malawian decision is significant because Malawi’s constitution specifically provides for the death penalty (in Article 16), unlike the unqualified right to life in the South African constitution . The Malawian decision ended years of confusion over the status of the remaining 37 prisoners on death row. Nearly 15 years ago, the Malawi High Court abolished the mandatory death penalty for murder . It had found that an automatic death sentence did not sufficiently individualise sentencing and, therefore, was cruel and degrading punishment. But, the ruling was not clearly retroactive. Many defendants were still appealing their mandatory death sentences or had them commuted to life imprisonment without ever having a sentencing hearing. This “grey area” led to the latest c...

As the world battles the deadly COVID-19 virus, countries across sub-Saharan Africa have taken a number of measures aimed at stopping the spread of the virus in their territories. However, while efforts to address the COVID-19 pandemic are a stark reminder that the right to life is important and must be protected, a new report by Amnesty International on the global use of the death penalty in 2019 shows that some governments in sub-Saharan Africa do not consistently seek to protect the right to life. In fact, in some instances they actively strive to violate it by sentencing people to death or executing them. Botswana, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan In 2019, four countries in the region – Botswana, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan – carried out executions in their territories despite a 5% reduction in known executions in the world. Amnesty International confirmed one execution in Botswana, one in Sudan, 11 in South Sudan and 12 in Somalia. These four countries are increasi...