UN welcomes death penalty ban

2007-07-27 12:00

Geneva - The United Nations high commissioner for human rights on Friday welcomed Rwanda's decision to abolish the death penalty, and said it opened the way for genocide suspects to be tried there.

Louise Arbour said: "A country that has suffered the ultimate crime and whose people's thirst for justice is still far from quenched has decided to forego a sanction that should have no place in any society that claims to value human rights and the inviolability of the person."

She praised Rwanda for "demonstrating leadership by action" and said the ban announced on Thursday meant that countries which had refused to hand over suspects to the courts there because they might face the death penalty could now do so.

Abolishing the death penalty was one of the conditions set by the UN-backed International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to allow the transfer of genocide suspects to the Rwandan judiciary.

Offloading some of the less high-profile cases to Rwandan justice had become a necessity for the Tanzania-based tribunal, which was supposed to wind up all criminal proceedings by the end of 2008, 14 years after its creation.

- AFP