http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=509209
Axis of execution: American justice ranked alongside world's most repressive
regimes
By Justin Huggler, Asia Correspondent
07 April 2004
America is just one of just four countries responsible for 84 per cent of
executions around the world last year, a report released yesterday by
Amnesty International said.
The report groups the US with China, Iran and Vietnam as one of the
countries responsible for the overwhelming majority of executions worldwide.
It puts America ahead of Saudi Arabia, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of
Congo for known executions although in many countries complete figures are
unknown. The US and China were the only countries in the world to execute
child offenders last year, the report says.
At least 1,146 people were executed in 2003, down from 1,526 in 2002 and
3,048 in 2001, according to Amnesty's figures. China headed the list, far
ahead of all other countries, with at least 726 confirmed executions.
But Amnesty stressed that only "limited and incomplete records" were
available on China's executions, and the true figure was believed to be much
higher. A Chinese legislator suggested last month that his country executed
"nearly 10,000" people a year. At least two of last year's known executions
in China were carried out by lethal injection in new "execution vans",
introduced in March.
Iran was responsible for at least 108 executions last year. The condemned in
Iran are often hanged from cranes in public. The US came third with 65
people executed last year, including two men with long histories of mental
illness.
Unlike many of the other countries mentioned, there is no secrecy about
executions in the US, and complete figures are known.
In Vietnam, 64 people were executed last year, five of them, the report
notes, in front of a crowd of about 1,000 onlookers in November.
Saudi Arabia, one of the countries most notorious for executions, where the
condemned are beheaded with swords in public squares, came fifth with at
least 50 known executions, 26 of them for drug offences.
Conspicuous by their absence from the list were Libya and Syria, both
countries linked by the US to its extended "axis of evil". All three of the
original "axis of evil" countries Iran, Iraq and North Korea were
identified as carrying out executions in 2003, but Amnesty had no figures on
how many were executed in Iraq in the dying days of the Saddam regime, or in
North Korea. Amnesty released its figures at a meeting of the United Nations
Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. Last year the commission called on all
countries that allow capital punishment in their laws to agree to a
moratorium on executions.
"The intense secrecy that surrounds use of the death penalty in many
countries makes this depressing log of last year's executions an
underestimate of the true extent of the use of this outdated punishment
early in the 21st century," Lesley Warner of Amnesty said yesterday. "In
China alone we fear that many thousands of people ... are being executed in
secret each year, the majority after shockingly unfair trials.
"The US's defiant stance over executing those convicted for crimes committed
as children is one particular area of concern, sending a dangerous message
around the world. We call on the US to abandon child-offender executions as
a first measure towards ending all judicial killing."
The report noted that 113 prisoners had been released from death row in
America since 1973 because evidence had emerged that they were innocent of
the crimes of which they were convicted raising the possibility that other
innocent men and women went to their deaths.
Evidence often emerged of police misconduct, use of unreliable witness
testimony or confessions, and inadequate defence representation.
The report highlighted the case of Kenny Richey, a Scot who has spent 17
years on death row in Ohio, convicted of arson and murder. Richey is
appealing against his death sentence, and attempting to have fresh evidence
heard in an attempt to prove his innocence.
Kate Allen of Amnesty said of Richey: "His case is one of the most
compelling cases of apparent innocence that human rights campaigners have
ever seen."
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