NO ONE SHOULD BE PUT TO DEATH, NOT EVEN SADDAM - VATICAN

No one should be put to death, not even former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, said Cardinal Paul Poupard, president of the pontifical councils for Interreligious Dialogue and for Culture. "The Catechism of the Catholic Church, the church itself and the pope reaffirm that every person is a creature of God and that no one but the creator can claim to be the lord of the life and death of another," the cardinal said in an interview with the Italian news agency ANSA.

"Every creature, even the most wretched, was created in the image and likeness of God," the French cardinal said. "God is the master of life and death." The cardinal made his comments after Avvenire, the Italian bishops' daily newspaper, published an editorial June 20 calling for the life imprisonment and not the execution of Saddam and his co-defendants, who are on trial in Iraq.

"Even in the daily slaughterhouse of Iraq a human life – any human life – always is sacred," the newspaper said. Revenge, even resulting from a fair trial, "will not heal wounds, but rather risks exacerbating them further," Avvenire said. "Nothing gives legitimacy to a killing unless it is motivated by a compelling need for legitimate defense."

INDONESIA REFUSES EU REQUEST ON CANCELLATION OF DEATH PENALTY

Indonesia has refused the demand of the ambassadors of the European Union (EU) countries to revoke the country's death penalty, People's Daily online said in a Xinhua report July 4. Minister of Justice and Human Rights Hamid Awaluddin made the statement after meeting with the Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla, a counselor delegation of the European Union and the ambassadors of Finland and Germany at the vice presidential office.

As "they asked us to delete the death penalty, Indonesia still had the law, which was inherited from the Dutch colonial rule and event in the country's view of criminal law, death penalty should still exist," the minister said, adding "the vice president and I explained our position... and Indonesia's criminal law still has a cause of it (death penalty)." Awaluddin said that in the new draft, "the death penalty is still stipulated, which sparks pro and contra."

Indonesia has executed 71 people up to now and prepares to conduct the death penalty on tens of others, including three bombers whom played leading roles in the Bali bombings in 2002, which killed 202 people. Indonesian has been imposing death penalty on the cases of terrorism, drug trafficking and planned assassination.

DEATH PENALTY WORLDWIDE DIMINISHES, REPORT SAYS

Less countries worldwide are issuing life sentences, according to the Italian rights group Nessuno Tocchi Caino (Noone touch Cain) which released its annual report on the death penalty, AKI reported on July 21.

Today 90 countries have abolished capital punishment altogether, while no executions have taken place in another 52 states in the past few years. However, there are still 52 countries worldwide where capital punishment is legal. Overall, 5,494 executions were carried out in 2005, compared to 5,530 a year before. Asia is the continent where the highest number of executions were registered in 2005, 98.7 percent of life sentences worldwide. Among Asian countries, China ranks first with as many as 5,000 executions last year, followed by Iran with 113.

DEATH PENALTY NEEDS FIXING, SAY CRITICS

The death penalty should be changed or abolished because it is corrupting the U.S. system of justice at all levels, critics allege. "It corrupts all of us. It is corrupting our courts, it's corrupting prosecutors, it's corrupting defense attorneys, it's corrupting juries, it's corrupting our society," said Bryan Stevenson, a defense attorney and professor of clinical law at New York University's School of Law. He was among those participating in a National Press Club discussion on the future of the death penalty, Cyber Cast New (CSN.COM) reported July 24.

Stevenson said the system is so corrupt in Alabama that 80 percent of death row inmates face execution for committing crimes against white people, while 65 percent of all murder victims are black. "The people on death row are not terrorists. They are not Timothy McVeigh. The majority of them are poor, the mentally ill, the wronged," Stevenson said.

Sam Millsap, former district attorney for Bexar County, Texas, said too many innocent people face the death penalty. "It's better that a hundred guilty men go free, than one innocent man gets sentenced to death. It's important that we remember that." Kenneth Starr, a former U.S. solicitor general and independent counsel who investigated the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal, said that while he favors the death penalty, it needs to be fixed. "I am not an abolitionist and never have been," he said. Starr said the president and governors have the power to grant pardons and clemency and should do so more frequently. It is a power that Starr said has not been used in California since Ronald Reagan was governor.

POLISH LEADER WANTS EU TO RETURN TO DEATH PENALTY

Poland's conservative President Lech Kaczynski vowed on Friday to campaign for a return of the death penalty in the European Union, Washington Post said in a Reuters report July 28. He said the EU, which has effectively banned capital punishment, would to come to see it was justified for murder.

"Countries who give up this penalty award an unimaginable advantage to the criminal over his victim, the advantage of life over death," Kaczynski told public radio. Kaczynski and his twin brother Jaroslaw, Poland's prime minister, won power last year promising a tough stance against corruption and crime in the biggest ex-communist EU member. Their traditionalist and nationalist rhetoric has alarmed Warsaw's EU partners, raising concerns they will drive Poland away from the European mainstream.

The Kaczynskis dismiss the criticism as unfair and argue their views on the death penalty should be debated. "We need to discuss this in Europe. I think that with time Europe will change its view in this regard," Kaczynski said. All 15 of the EU's older member states abandoned capital punishment in the late 1960s. The new members who joined in 2004 have had to abandon it as a condition of membership.

UGANDA GOVT NOT READY TO ABOLISH DEATH PENALTY

Uganda is not ready to abolish the death penalty the Speaker of Parliament, Edward Kiwanuka Ssekandi, has said. Ssekandi, on Wednesday, July 26, told officials from the African Commission on Human and People's Rights that abolishing the death penalty "could cause anarchy" in society, The New Times (Kigali) said in a report from Kampala.

He said "in our society it requires patience and sensitization" to contain crime but not abolishing the death penalty. "I personally would not say we abolish the death penalty. We should leave it intact after all, it is rarely carried out. Once we abolish the death penalty, it could cause anarchy in our society," Ssekandi told Mumba Malila and Reine Alapini-Gansou, both commissioners at the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights.

The two officials, during a courtesy call, had asked the Speaker to explain why Uganda was reluctant to abolish the death penalty, "a human rights abuse that is hindering development in Africa". "From what you have said, it is true Uganda will do better. As parliament, you should explain why you have not abolished the death penalty. Nobody should take the life of another. That is how Africa will develop," Alapini-Gansou, the Commissioner of the Defense of the defenders of human rights, said.

But Ssekandi insisted: "Maybe some years to come. We still need to sensitise. The death penalty in Uganda is for capital offences, which are very few. Even in America, there are capital offences. And there is no evidence that many people have suffered because of the death penalty." The Speaker had earlier said that the abolition of the death penalty was first debated upon during the Constituent Assembly and majority of the members maintained that it stays.

FORMER CHINESE POLICEMAN LIFTS LID ON ORGAN HARVESTING

Chinese body parts are in hot demand, with Western patients sick of long waiting queues and in need of a transplant. Customers, including dozens of Australians, are prepared to pay up to $US170,000 ($255,700) for a major organ such as a lung or heart, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported July 25.

The report quoted former Beijing policeman Sun Liyong saying he knows the methods used by Chinese authorities to harvest body parts from prisoners. Mr Sun now lives in Australia, but during the 1980s he says he was well aware of what was happening to executed prisoners. "Before the prisoners were executed the Public Security Bureau would go to the detention centre and test their blood," he said. "As far as I know during the period I was a policeman all the organs were harvested by the Friendship Hospital in Beijing."

Records show the Friendship Hospital boasts of an excellent reputation in transplant operations. "The Beijing Public Security Bureau would notify the Friendship Hospital before they carried out the execution of prisoners," Mr Sun said. "The Friendship Hospital would then send an ambulance, and as soon as the prisoners were executed, the police on the spot would put them in a plastic bag and throw them into the van."

Mr Sun says the date and time of the executions were determined by patient demand. He says once prison authorities had carried out the execution, hospital staff were ready to act. "And the staff from the hospital would already have everything prepared for the organ harvesting," he said. Mr Sun left the police force in 1987, but afterwards he became involved in China's democracy movement.