DEATH PENALTY: ZAMPARUTTI (RADICALS)- ITALY SHOULD NOT BE COMPLICIT IN US EXECUTIONS
November 23, 2010: after last week having presented an urgent question to the President of the Council and to the Health Minister, Radical parliamentarian and Hands Off Cain treasurer Elisabetta Zamparutti today presented to the Chamber of Deputies a resolution regarding Hospira Spa. Hospira is the pharmaceutical company based in Liscate, in the province of Milan, commissioned with producing and exporting Sodium Thiopental to the United States (Pentotal), the potent barbiturate used in all lethal injection protocols. The scarcity of the drug has caused the delay of executions in various American states.
The Resolution, signed by all Radical parliamentarians, committed the Government to intervening to assure that the production and overseas sale of Sodium Thiopental by Hospira is authorised for medical reasons only, for the purpose as written in the production license, on the label of the drug and in the sale contract, where it clearly specifies that the product is not to be used in lethal injections.â
âI completely reject that my country, which has abolished the death penalty and is conducting a fight at the UN for the approval of a new Resolution for the universal Moratorium on capital punishment, is to become complicit in a series of executions in the United States. In many states, the shortage of poison for the lethal injection has caused a de facto moratorium on executions. We hope this moratorium does not end quickly,â Elisabetta Zamparutti said. (Sources: HOC, 23/11/2010)
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