The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has warned on Wednesday of the lack of evidence against several US prisoners currently on death row and has called on the US government to definitively abolish capital punishment.
Seif Magango, spokesman for the office, has expressed his “grave concern” about the pending executions of two men in the United States, where six people have recently been subjected to the death penalty in five states across the country over a period of just twelve days.
“This increase in executions is very alarming,” he said in a statement. Thus, he regretted that Robert Robertson and Derrick Ryan Dearmen are awaiting execution on October 17 in Texas and Alabama.
“We oppose the death penalty as a political issue in all circumstances. It is incompatible with the right to life and poses an unacceptable risk of executing innocent people,” he said. “The evidence suggests that it has very little effect in reducing crime rates,” he said.
That is why he urged the United States to “join the growing global consensus on the abolition of the death penalty, starting with imposing a moratorium on all executions.”
