Death Penalty News

In Somalia, Uganda, and Mauritania, the offense can carry the death penalty. DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Senegal‘s parliament has approved a new bill that toughens punishment for homosexuality in the largely Muslim West African nation, the latest African country to impose harsh penalties against the LGBT community. The new bill, which was introduced to parliament last month by Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, describes homosexual acts as being “against nature.” It doubles the punishment for those convicted from prison sentences of one to five years to between five and 10 years. Nearly all lawmakers voted in favor of the bill during Wednesday’s plenary, with no opposition and three abstentions. It needs presidential assent before becoming a law, with Senegal’s President Bassirou Diomaye Faye widely expected to sign it.

From Brunei to Brazil, Budapest to Boise, LGBTQ+ people are fighting for their lives and dignity. On May 17, 1990, the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders, recognizing homosexuality as a natural variant of human sexuality. This milestone now marks an annual celebration of sexual and gender diversities, known as the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT). Yet the lasting impact of stigma, and “othering” is evident in the discrimination and abuse that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people around the world continue to experience. “Breaking the Silence” is this year’s theme, under the pall of a pandemic that has had a devastating effect on lives and livelihoods across the globe. COVID-19 has affected people across divisions of race, class, and gender and exposed the fault lines of inequality, disproportionately affecting those on the social and economic margins . In a crisis, it’s easy to...

DAKAR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Human rights activists on Thursday demanded clemency for a Senegalese maid who was trafficked to Saudi Arabia and may face the death penalty after being charged with killing her employer. Mbayang Diop, 22, was arrested in June, weeks after arriving in the world's largest oil exporter, and accused of stabbing her employer to death in the capital of Riyadh, rights groups said. Senegalese civil society groups say Diop may have killed the woman she worked for in self-defense after a dispute, and that the Saudi authorities had not properly investigated the case. On Wednesday, the Senegalese ambassador to Saudi Arabia visited Diop in prison in the eastern city of Dammam to provide assistance, Senegal's foreign ministry said in a statement. The Saudi embassy in Dakar was not immediately available to comment on the case. Diop left Dakar without telling her family, having been approached and offered work as a maid, said her bro...

Indonesia is likely to resume executions of prisoners this week, with 14 inmates – four Indonesians and 10 foreign nationals – expected to face the firing squad this weekend . No formal list of death row prisoners has been released by Indonesian authorities, but a group of lawyers from the Community Legal Aid Institute has compiled a list of those it believes will be in the next round of executions.  Britons Lindsay Sandiford and Gareth Cashmore, and American Frank Amado are not on this list but remain on death row. Indonesia has not carried out the death penalty since it killed 14 prisoners last year – six in January and eight, including Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumuran, in April – prompting an international outcry.  Capital punishment for drugs offences is prohibited under international law. Here is what we know about those set to face the firing squad this week. Merri Utami Indonesia Utami, 42, from Sukoharjo, Central Java, is...

It has been nearly a year since April 29, 2015, the last time Indonesia carried out the death penalty. On that day, a firing squad executed eight people convicted of drug-related crimes , despite the pleas and outcry of the international community.  However, all of the uproar over the executions seemed to give the government pause. Last November, Indonesia’s coordinating security minister, Luhut Panjaitan, said that the government was not thinking “about executing a death penalty with the economic conditions like this,” leading many to say Indonesia had enacted a de facto moratorium on the death penalty . But various officials since then have been adamant that executions would eventually resume, and now we know they were quite serious. Yesterday, the government announced the names of the next 10 people set to be executed in Indonesia. All of them are foreigners who have been found guilty of various drug-related crimes. Of the 10 foreigners set to executed, four are N...

Burkina Faso must seize the opportunity to abolish the death penalty, Amnesty International said on the eve of parliamentary sessions which will culminate in an historic vote. Tomorrow the national transitional parliament will start a series of discussions with organisations and interested parties regarding the abolition of the death penalty before putting a bill to the vote on 6 September. The government has already approved the text of the bill which has been sent back to the transitional parliament. "This is a critical moment for Burkina Faso to put itself on the right side of history by acknowledging the inviolable nature of the right to life"-- Alioune Tine, Amnesty International West Africa director. "The eyes of the world will be on the country's parliamentarians to see whether they will join the steady global movement away from the use of the death penalty and abolish this cruel punishment once and for all." The last known execution wa...

President Yahya Jammeh Gambia's President Yahya Jammeh has warned that death row inmates should expect to have their sentences implemented, apparently signalling an end to a 3-year unofficial moratorium on executions. The military strongman said in a meeting with religious leaders broadcast on state television late on Friday that the move was a response to the spiralling murder rate. "During Ramadan, someone buried her child alive. 3 days before Ramadan, someone in the Upper River Region threatened to kill someone and ended up killing the individual," he said. He did not say whether death sentences for convicts already on death row would be brought forward, but he appeared to pre-empt criticism of any move to resume executions. "If I am driving a vehicle on the road and you decide to cross in front of the vehicle, if the vehicle knocks you down and you die, am I the one that killed you or are you the one that killed yourself?" he said. N...

Luxembourg (AFP) - Gays can seek asylum in the European Union when threatened with jail for same-sex activity, but only when such persecution is "sufficiently serious", Europe's top court ruled on Thursday. The judgement by the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice was seen as divisive, with rights groups differing widely in their reading of what this could mean in practice. The court found that jail terms for homosexual behaviour could be considered "an act of persecution" warranting asylum. But it said the threat of persecution must be enforced and "sufficiently serious" with courts in home countries regularly throwing people behind bars. European lawmakers dubbed the ruling a breakthrough. But Amnesty International saw it differently, deeming it "a setback" for gay rights. The court had been asked to consider a case referred by a Dutch court regarding applications for asylum by three men from Sierra Leone, U...

President Yahya Jammeh The Gambia has announced that it will be suspending the execution of death row inmates in the country. The decision to put the execution of the death row inmates on hold was made yesterday by President Yahya Jammeh following a meeting with former Senegalese Prime Minister, Souleymane Ndene Ndiaye. “President Jammeh has assured me that he is going to suspend the executions,” Mr Ndiaye told journalists after the meeting. Nine prisoners including two Senegalese nationals have already been executed by a firing a squad since Mr Jammeh threatened to kill all death row inmates before the end of this month to curb crimes and terrorism looming as a threat to the country's stability. "All punishment prescribed by the law will be maintained in the country to ensure that criminals get what they deserve, that is, those who killed are killed and those who deserve to be put away from the society are put away from the society in accordance with the...

Yahya Jammeh THE Gambia’s police chief, Yankuba Sonko, has defended the execution of nine death row prisoners in the tiny West African nation, saying it would make people think twice about committing crimes. “The tougher the penalties, the more careful people will be when committing crimes,” the police chief told a newspaper yesterday. “The law on the death penalty was passed by parliament and they foresee the reasons for passing it. We are now at the enforcing side of it and this will go a long way in reducing the crime rate in the country.” Meanwhile, a rights activist, Trevor Uyi Omoruyi, who is also an international scholar who in the past joined in the fight against the ill treatment of Nigerians in Libya by the then Gadaffi regime, has urged human rights groups to call on President Goodluck Jonathan to intervene in the killings in the Gambia. No official crime statistics are released by government in the tiny country, which is surrounded by Senegal on three s...

The Gambian government has confirmed the execution of nine death row prisoners by firing squad . The individuals were taken from their cells the evening of 23 August and executed shortly after. The Gambian government should immediately halt any further executions and impose an official moratorium on executions. There are growing fears that at least 38 people remaining on death row are at imminent risk of execution following the Gambian government’s confirmation that nine death row prisoners were executed by firing squad and its public commitment that executions will continue. Many inmates have been convicted after unfair trials where they may not have had access to lawyers or a full appeal process. Some were convicted on politically-motivated charges and/or were subjected to torture or other ill-treatment to force confessions. Others have been convicted of “treason” – an offence that does not meet the international law requirement that death sentences can only be imposed for...

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 sai...