TOGOLESE CABINET RESOLVES TO ABOLISH DEATH SENTENCE

December 10, 2008: Oulegoh Keyewa, the Togolese Minister for Communication and Culture, read a statement announcing that the cabinet decided to abolish the death penalty. "The third bill submitted by the keeper of the Seals and Minister of Justice… is on the abolition of the death sentence in Togo. In fact, the choice made by the country to set up a healthy justice system that limits judicial mistakes, corrects, educates and guarantees inherent rights to the human person is no longer compatible with the penal law which still maintains the death sentence and thus recognises for the jurisdictions an absolute the consequences of which are irremediable."
"The abolition of the death sentence which is considered as a humiliating, degrading and cruel sentence by the community of nations that respect the rights of the human person to which we belong, imposed itself on the collective conscience of Togolese for a moratorium of 30 years, while it continues to be among the penal law," he said. (Sources: BBC, 11/12/2008)