LEBANON: Rumors of capital punishment ignite human rights activists -- Pressure groups decry executions

Activists say that such practices do not deter crimes and that the government should seek to rehabilitate criminals

Capital punishment is not only useless in deterring crime, but is also inhumane and unjustifiable, according to Walid Slaibi, head of the Human Rights Movement in Lebanon.

"There have been rumors circulating that four convicted prisoners are to be executed soon" Slaibi said during a news conference at the Press Federation on Friday, "and we are here today to express our total opposition to the death penalty, whatever the reasons, whatever the circumstances."

The press conference was organized in collaboration with Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort (ECPM) or Together Against the Death Penalty. Established in 2000, ECPM is an international organization petitioning against the application of the death penalty in several countries around the world.

Capital punishment is a "threefold escape," according to Slaibi. "It�s an escape from facing the causes of these crimes and trying to fix them, an escape from responsibility to the prisoner�s parents and an escape from the criminal�s social rehabilitation," he said.

He called sentencing someone to death the "easy way" of rendering justice. "It saves those in charge the trouble of facing responsibilities and replaces those responsibilities with the hangman�s rope," Slaibi said. He also called for an indemnity law to compensate parents of prisoners facing the death penalty.

Mohammed Baalbaki, head of the federation, reiterated Slaibi�s arguments, adding, "life is a gift from God and no human has the right to take it away from him. Mercy and clemency should be the ultimate gateway before the law, and in every human relation."

Representing ECPM, French lawyer Richard Sedillot said that "the death penalty has never solved anything. The fact that it was suspended in the country for 5 years proves that the Lebanese are well aware that this is no way to dispense social justice, and that a crime cannot be resolved by another crime."

The death penalty has no preventative effect, according to Sedillot, and the abolition of the penalty in several countries has not affected their respective crime rates.

Sedillot argued that nations still employing the death penalty were more violent societies than those that had abolished the practice, citing Italy and the United States as examples.

"While Italy abolished the death penalty in 1790, the United States still applies it, and the United States has a much higher incidence of violent crime than Italy does," he said.

The United States, he said, was a negative example for the rest of the world, because many of the prisoners who had been executed there were later proven innocent.

"Lebanon must set an example for the rest of the region," he said.

"The cultural diversity and religious harmony must speak for this country as an oasis of peace and tolerance, a humane country that should be admired by the West and the international community."