Ghana supports death penalty- AI

Ghana still supports death penalty even though in practice there had not been any execution since 1993, Mr Lawrence Amesu, Director of Amnesty International(AI), Ghana said on Tuesday.

He explained that by retaining the death penalty in the statute books, Ghana supported the action.

Mr Amesu made the observation when launching the “Global Death Penalty Report” at a press conference in Accra.

He appealed to President John Evans Atta Mills to declare an urgent moratorium based on the recommendations of the Constitutional Review Committee on expunging the law from the country’s constitution.

Mr Amesu said though Amnesty International Ghana did not condone crime nor excused the perpetrators of their actions, he stressed, death penalty was gross violations of the victims’ human rights.

The report said China, the leading country with the highest number of executions in 2011, put to death more people than the rest of the world put together.

Iran was ranked the country with the second highest number of executions followed by Saudi Arabia.

Iraq was ranked fourth followed by the United States of America (USA).

Yemen came sixth and was followed by North Korea and Somalia eighth.

The methods of execution included beheading, hanging, lethal injection and shooting.

About 18,750 people including 138 Ghanaian prisoners were reported to be on death row.

The report showed that US was the only country in the Group of Eight (G8) to effect execution.

G8 is a forum for the governments of eight of the world's largest economies, which are; Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and United Kingdom and the US.**