30 November 2010 :

On Thursday December 2nd, at 11 o'clock, at the headquarters at via di Torre Argentina 76, Rome, a press conference will be held on the Italian production of Sodium Thiopental destined for executions in the United States.
Presented by Hands Off Cain and Reprieve, the press conference “Lethal Trade” - How an Abolitionist Country is Collaborating in Putting People to Death in the United States, will see the participation of: SANDRA BABCOCK, Lawyer, Expert in Capital Cases, USA

MAYA FOA, Representative of Reprieve, UK

LIVIA FIRTH, Ambassador for Reprieve, UK

OLIVIERO TOSCANI, Photographer, author of “We, on Death Row” campaign, ITALY

SERGIO D’ELIA, Secretary of Hands Off Cain, ITALY

ELISABETTA ZAMPARUTTI, Radical Party MP and Treasurer of Hands Off Cain, ITALY

ANGELO BONELLI, President of the Green Party, ITALY

Also present will be Joseph Margulies, lawyer and defender of death row inmates as well as politicians; non-governmental organisations and artists committed to the campaign for a worldwide moratorium on capital punishment.

During the Press Conference the “Lethal Trade” dossier will be released, along with documents relating to the Parliamentary, legal and public proceedings currently underway in Italy and the UK which are aimed at blocking the export of sodium thiopental, the barbiturate present in all the executing States’ lethal injection protocol, to the USA.

Following the execution in Arizona of Jeffrey Landrigan on 25th October of this year using drugs imported from the United Kingdom, Reprieve successfully carried out legal proceedings in order to prevent British sodium thiopental from being exported for the executions of other prisoners in the USA. Last 28 November, the British government decided controls over the exportation of Sodium Thiopental.

Similar proceedings have been started in Italy, where Hospira Spa, a pharmaceutical company based in Liscate, on the outskirts of Milan, has been chosen by the American parent company based in Lake Forest, Illinois, to be the seat of production for the sodium thiopental destined for the American penitentiaries.

After the British government's decision, Hospira has truly become the key source, if not the only source, of Pentothal for lethal injection.

It would be a painful paradox should Italy, while being committed to the struggle for an Universal Moratorium on Capital Executions, risks becoming complicit in the death penalty in the United States, where the shortage of poison for the lethal injection is causing a de facto moratorium on executions.