More than 100 convicted murderers, rapists and kidnappers are on death row in Afghanistan waiting for President Hamid Karzai to sign the orders for their execution, a senior judge said on Tuesday.
Crimes such as kidnapping, rape and killing have increased sharply in recent years in Afghanistan where the Taliban, ousted in a United States-led invasion in 2001, carried out public executions for similar acts.
Five people have been executed since Saturday after Karzai approved the sentences following repeated appeals from many ordinary Afghans to mete out the punishment as enshrined in the country’s Constitution and ordered by Islam.
”We have 125 people who have been sentenced by various courts to the death penalty and are to be executed after Karzai’s approval,” a senior Supreme Court judge who declined to be named said.
An official at the presidential palace confirmed that lists of those sentenced to death by the courts have been sent to the president for him to approve their execution.
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay said she was dismayed about the recent and pending executions, especially as Karzai’s government has acknowledged the Afghan judicial system has serious shortcomings.
”The law enforcement and judicial systems in Afghanistan in their current state fall far short of internationally accepted standards guaranteeing due process and fair trial,” Pillay’s spokesperson Rupert Colville told a news briefing in Geneva.
”Misconduct by the police and the judiciary has been well documented. Under these circumstances there is obviously a grave risk of there being miscarriages of justice and that innocent people may be executed,” Colville said. – Reuters