On 5 January 2011, a coalition of international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), wrote to the European Commission to urge them to review and amend Council Regulation (EC) No. 1236/2005, which controls the international trade in equipment that could be used for capital punishment, torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, to include drugs used in the lethal injection protocol.
On 26 October 2010, Jeffery Landrigan was executed by lethal injection for the 1989 murder of Chester Dean Dyer in Phoenix, Arizona, United States. The execution took place in spite of a US-wide shortage of sodium thiopental, the anaesthetic agent in the three-drug cocktail used in lethal injections in Arizona. The Arizona Attorney General revealed that the sodium thiopental used to execute Landrigan was imported from the United Kingdom.
The export of sodium thiopental from any European country to the US for the purpose of lethal injections undermines not just the spirit and purpose of Council Regulation (EC) No. 1236/2005, but also the EU’s policy of fighting against the death penalty in countries where it still exists. Sodium thiopental is the drug preferred by US authorities that still carry out the death penalty with lethal injections.
The joint NGO submission outlined recommendations to the European Commission. Specifically, to urge the Commission, in consultation with Member States and at the earliest possible opportunity, to extend the scope of Council Regulation (EC) No. 1236/2005 to control the trade in drugs used in lethal injections by:
(a) including sodium thiopental in its Annex III, thereby subjecting this drug to the export control systems of EU Member States; and
(b) including a new ‘torture-death penalty end-use catch-all’ clause in the Regulation, which would allow EU Member States to prohibit, on a case-by-case basis, the trade of any item not listed in the Annexes of the Regulation but that clearly have no practical use other than for the purposes of capital punishment; or where there are reasonable grounds to believe that such items would be used for the purposes of capital punishment. This catch-all clause has been advocated by the UK government, and would enable EU Member States to prevent exports of any drugs where there are reasonable grounds to believe that such items would be used for the purposes of capital punishment.
These 2 measures would help ensure that any future exports of any drugs from the EU (including sodium thiopental, and the other drugs currently used in the lethal injection protocol: pancuronium bromide (Pavulon), potassium chloride, and pentobarbital) would not be used for capital punishment, but only for legitimate medical purposes.
The submission was endorsed by the following NGOs:
• Amicus, UK
• Amnesty International
• Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort (ECPM), France
• International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)
• International Federation of Action by Christians for the Abolition of Torture (FIACAT)
• International Harm Reduction Association (IHRA), UK
• Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights (MVFHR), US
• National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL), US
• Omega Research Foundation (ORF), UK
• Penal Reform International (PRI), UK
• Reprieve, UK
• Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (TCADP), US
• World Coalition Against the Death Penalty (WCADP)
Source: PRI, January 6, 2011
No comments:
Post a Comment