Amnesty urges Thailand to scrap death penalty

BANGKOK, April 26  - Amnesty International has urged Thailand to scrap the death penalty following five executions in a Bangkok prison this week.

The London-based human rights body asked Thailand in a appeal letter sent to Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and other senior officials to suspend the pending executions of more than 20 prisoners and other new cases.

"The death penalty has not been shown to deter crime more effectively than other punishments," it said.

  "Amnesty International has strong reason to believe that there is a risk of miscarriages of justice in court cases.

There are overwhelming numbers of credible reports of police ill-treating and torturing suspects in pre-trial detention to extract confessions."

Amnesty said Thailand resumed executions in 1995 after an eight-year moratorium. Since then, 38 condemned prisoners had been executed, shot from behind with a machine gun while their hands were tied to a pole.

  The Thai Department of Corrections is making preparations to replace shooting with lethal injection by 2003.

Two of the five men executed early this week were convicted of murder and the others were sentenced to death for trafficking half a million methamphetamine tablets.