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PERU LEADER DEFEATED AS DEATH PENALTY VOTED DOWN
January 10, 2007: Peru's Congress rejected President Alan Garcia's bill seeking to introduce the death penalty for terrorists. Painful memories of deadly bombings and raids by Maoist rebels during an insurgence between 1980 and 1998 are still fresh in Peru, and Garcia's death penalty proposal was part of the campaign platform that helped him win July's election. But in a result that surprised political analysts, legislators voted his proposal down by 49 votes to 26.
Even some members of Garcia's APRA party, which does not control Congress, voted against it. Political analyst Manuel Torrado of the Datum International consultancy and polling firm said more than 70 percent of Peruvians favor capital punishment, which led Garcia to think that Congress would also support the bill.
Capital punishment for terrorism is allowed under Peru's 1993 constitution, but it is not in the penal code. The proposal would have added capital punishment to the code, which does not currently allow for it under any circumstance.
Congress deputies said doing so would have breached the American Convention on Human Rights, which Peru has signed and which says the signatories cannot restore the death penalty or apply it more widely. (Sources: Reuters, 12/01/2007)
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