May 11, 2018: The European Union has urged Trinidad and Tobago to abolish the death penalty, saying that the bloc does not believe that capital punishment deters crime.
While EU representatives expressed concern about Trinidad and Tobago's high crime rate, gang activity and the signifcant number of guns on the nation's streets, British Ambassador Tim Stew countered that "there is too much evidence to show that a mandatory death penalty is not an effective deterrent to crime." He concluded that the death penalty was simply not the right response.
Flanked by colleagues from France, Spain, the Netherlands and Germany, Stew said: "We don't think that's the right answer. That's not for us to tell you what to do. It's your country and you can run it as you wish and we can well understand the public pressures there may be, the political pressures there may be, people calling in the face of crime for the death penalty to be carried out.
"There is evidence which shows that when a jury knows that they are facing somebody and have to decide if they are not guilty on a murder case, when they know that the only penalty available to a judge is the death penalty, they are less inclined to find that person guilty and more inclined to let that person walk out of that court, even though they may have done what they are alleged to have done.
"Whereas, if juries know there is a range of options available to a judge, from heavy sentencing to lighter sentencing, depending on the terms and circumstances, then they are more inclined to see that justice is done."
The death sentence in Trinidad and Tobago is usually carried out by hanging. The last such execution took place in 1999.
(Sources: wp.telesurtv.net, 11/05/2018)

May 13, 2018: An Iranian court sentenced eight Daesh members to death over a 2017 attack on the Iranian parliament, a judicial official said.
“Eight people were handed the death penalty and 18 others face trial over last year’s deadly attacks. The convicts have 20 days to appeal. The trials began last month,“ President of Tehran Revolutionary Court Ghazanfar Abadi told Iranian state TV.
Simultaneous attacks on the parliament building and the Supreme Leader Imam Khomeini’s Mausoleum killed 17 people and wounded nearly 50 in June 2017.
(Sources: aa.com.tr, 13/05/2018)

May 11, 2018: The African Union's human rights body has called on Mauritania to "review" a draft law that applies the death penalty for blasphemy as global outrage grows over the imprisonment of a young blogger.
Cheikh Ould Mohamed Ould Mkheitir has been detained for more than four years despite his death penalty being downgraded to a two-year sentence in November.
The decision by an appeals court to spare Mkheitir's life, which caused clashes and outrage in the conservative Muslim nation, came after he repented for charges of insulting the Prophet Muhammad in a blog post.
Later in November the government moved to harden up religious laws so that showing repentance for blasphemy and apostasy could no longer prevent the death penalty.
But the text of the bill has not yet been promulgated by President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, without official explanation.
The head of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, Soyata Maiga, called on the government to reconsider the bill in the capital Nouakchott on May 9.
"The African commission uses the occasion of its current session in Mauritania to urge the highest authorities to review this legislation," she said.
"This review must be done in accordance with the guidelines and efforts of the African commission's working group on the death penalty and extrajudicial killings in Africa."
The African Union-backed group, whose decisions are not binding, advocates for the death penalty to be abolished.
Mauritanian authorities have not commented on Mkheitir's fate since November.
Some 20 NGOs have since asked the country's authorities to end the "secrecy" and guarantee the safety of the blogger, who is in his thirties.
The case contributed to Mauritania falling 17 spots in Reporters Without Borders' 2018 World Press Freedom Index, the biggest drop of any African nation.
The death sentence has not been applied in Mauritania since 1987.
(Sources: news24.com, 11/05/2018)