Nigeria Tops List Of Countries With Death Sentences

UNITED NATIONS--Egypt and Nigeria
accounted for well over 1,000 of the death
sentences announced last year, more than a
third of the world's total, Amnesty
International has announced in its latest
annual report on the death penalty.
The London-based human-rights group April
1 expressed alarm at the 28-percent jump in
death sentences, with 2,466 people in 55
countries condemned to death in 2014 and at
least 607 people executed in 22 countries.
Neither of those numbers is complete, as
North Korea's isolationist stance means that
no estimate is available from Pyongyang.
Amnesty International also doesn't report
numbers for China, where such information
is considered a state secret. The Dui Hua
Foundation, a U.S.-based prison-research
group, has estimated 2,400 executions were
carried out in China in 2014.
Amnesty International also said it was unable
to confirm whether judicial executions took
place last year in Syria, where civil war has
raged for four years.
The countries with the most recorded
executions last year were Iran with at least
289, Saudi Arabia with at least 90, Iraq with
at least 61 and the United States with at least
35, the rights group said. In Iran, hundreds
more executions were "not officially
acknowledged" and the total could be as high
as 743, the organization said.
Once again, the United States was the only
country in the Americas to execute people in
2014, the report said. Texas and Missouri
each carried out 10 executions. Other U.S.
states that put people to death were Arizona,
Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Oklahoma.
The overall number of global executions last
year dropped almost 22 percent from 2013.
"The numbers speak for themselves: The
death penalty is becoming a thing of the
past," said Amnesty International Secretary-
General Salil Shetty.
But Shetty condemned the use of death
sentences as a way to fight crime or
"terrorism."
Nigeria announced 659 death sentences,
mostly for murder and armed robbery, but a
military court in December sentenced to
death 54 soldiers who had been accused of
refusing to join operations against the
extremist group Boko Haram. The soldiers
testified that they had not been properly
equipped to go after Boko Haram, which has
since pledged allegiance to the Islamic State
group.
Nigeria's higher number of death sentences,
up from 141 the year before, was also a result
of more complete data offered by authorities.
Egypt announced at least 509 death sentences
last year, many of them in the mass trials that
have been held since the ouster of Islamist
President Mohammed Morsi in 2013. The
practice has brought international criticism.
In one case in December, 188 people were
sentenced to death in the killing of 11 police
officers.
In the United States, at least 72 death
sentences were announced last year.
Amnesty International also expressed concern
about countries that resumed the practice of
executions, including Pakistan, which
reinstated the death penalty in December
after a Pakistani Taliban attack on a school
killed 150 people, most of them children.
"An alarming number of countries that used
the death penalty in 2014 did so in response
to real or perceived threats to state security
and public safety posed by terrorism, crime
or internal stability," the new report said.
Other countries resuming executions in 2014
were Jordan, Singapore, Egypt, Belarus, the
United Arab Emirates and Equatorial Guinea,
the report said. Indonesia said it would
resume executions for drug-related crimes,
straining ties in particular with Australia and
Brazil, which both have citizens on death row
there.
As of the end of last year, more than 19,000
people around the world were estimated to be
living under death sentences.

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Posted by : Michael Ajah

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Friday, 3 April 2015