Secretaris-generaal van de Raad van Europa: de klok tikt voor de doodstraf in de Verenigde Staten (en)
Strasbourg, 04.05.2006 - “I am confident that the United States of America will eventually follow the example of almost all other civilised and democratic nations in the world and abolish capital punishment once and for all” said Terry Davis. “The cases of Zacarias Moussaoui and Joseph Lewis Clark are the two most recent milestones in this country’s slow but steady path to higher standards in administering justice and respecting human dignity and human rights.
Yesterday, Zacarias Moussaoui was sentenced to life imprisonment for the crimes he committed. A day earlier, convicted murderer Joseph Lewis Clark had to help his own executioners in order to end a 90 minute ordeal of unprecedented cruelty and incompetence. Now he is no longer punished, he is simply dead, and it is the American public who must live with the terrible images of a wrong practice at its worst.
The United States of America is a proud and powerful country. When the time comes, the decision to abolish the death penalty will be theirs and theirs alone. But to speed up this decision I encourage our American friends to look for good examples abroad. They enjoy an observer status in the Council of Europe, a body which has helped to transform Europe into a death-penalty free zone with great benefits for justice and absolutely no negative consequences to the rates of violent crimes. I call on our American friends to make full use of their observer status – and observe both why and how the death penalty can be abolished” concluded the Secretary General.
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