Amnesty International urges South Sudan to ban the death penalty
South Sudan is one of only five African countries that carried out executions last year, including Sudan, Somalia Gambia and Botswana, according to Amnesty International’s annual report on the death penalty.
In less than two years as an independent nation, the African country has executed 12 people: Seven in 2011 and at least another five in 2012.
Two men were hanged in Juba prison on August 28, followed by three further executions in Wau Prison on September 6. More than 200 prisoners were on death row, shackled and crowded into cramped and dirty cells,” the report reads.
Inmates listen to officials during an inspection of Warrap Prison, February 26.
Last December South Sudan was among 111 member states that voted in favour of a new UN General Assembly resolution approving a moratorium on the death penalty.
Therefore we are calling on the government of South Sudan to heed their own call at the United Nations and implement it at home and suspend all further executions and review the use of the death penalty with possible abolition in future,” said Jan Jan Erik Wetzel, an Advocate and Adviser on the Death Penalty at Amnesty International.
So far all the executions were reviewed by the Supreme Court and approved by the President as required by the South Sudanese law.
But the rights group expressed concern that the judicial system in South Sudan could not guarantee a fair trial in compliance with international standards.
We did however find problems with fair trails during the initial procedures. Quite often people were unable to follow the court proceedings and potentially they did not speak the language that the court officials were using. Quite often the defendants didn’t have access to lawyers. We see very serious concerns during the actual trial in which the death sentences were passed,” Wetzel said.
More than 200 prisoners sit on death row at the moment and majority of them were not represented by lawyers in trials that often lasted only minutes.
Among these hundreds is 35 year old Abdallah Boaz who is on death row in South Sudan’s Juba Prison -- the main prison facility in the country. One morning a corpse was found by the roadside a few meters from my house. I was arrested and accused of being the killer,” Boaz said.
Here in South Sudan if you are foreigner, you are guilty of anything. I don’t know Arabic and I couldn’t understand most of what my accuser was saying for all the six times I appeared in court. The judge told me that I was the killer and sentenced me to death.”
Boaz said he couldn’t afford a lawyer to at least appeal against the sentence and was only praying that a miracle will happen, someone will come to my rescue and I will not be executed”.
In September last year, South Sudan’s Permanent Representative in Geneva, Riek Puok Riek, told the UN Human Rights Council that South Sudan agrees with … the logic of abolishing the death penalty. But we believe that this is a process that could be approached gradually,” according to the report.
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Cramped, dirty and underfed: Prisoners die in Warrap jail
by Aping Kuluel | in SocietyGovernment spokesman Barnaba Marial Benjamin said a month ago that the existing death penalty legislation would be reviewed as part of the ongoing constitutional review process to replace the Transitional Constitution of 2011.
Neighbouring Sudan carried out the largest number of executions in Africa. At least 19 executions and at least 199 death sentences were reported in Sudan in 2012 alone.
Among these are two women, Intisar Sharif Abdallah and Layla Ibrahim Issa Jumul, who were sentenced to death by stoning on charges of adultery while married” in separate cases in May and July.
In both cases the women were sentenced after unfair trials involving forced confessions. The sentences were subsequently overturned on appeal, and both women were released,” according to the report.
