DEATH PENALTY: ITALY WORKS TO RELAUNCH MORATORIUM

September 13, 2013: Italy is working to establish a group of countries that will resume the campaign for a moratorium on the death penalty in the world.
This was announced by Foreign Minister Emma Bonino in the Senate during a press conference sponsored by Hands Off Cain and the Extraordinary Commission for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights, throwing an alarm on the record number of executions recorded in the last month in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and North Korea.
We have to work with NGOs and also at the parliamentary level because "the signals from many parts are negative," added Bonino, noting that Italy will address the issue early as next week the UN General Assembly, and is preparing a conference in Sierra Leone with Hands Off Cain, which will be held soon.
For Bonino it is also "indispensable" to focus new attention on the International Criminal Court because there are "several attempts to weaken it," either by making cuts to the budget of the Court, and with signals that are launched from countries like Kenya that in Parliament has expressed its intention to leave the Court.
Bonino then resumed a past slogan launched by the Radical Party at the time of the trial of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
“Hands off Assad?”, it was asked to the Minister in relation to the future of the Syrian president. "As a member of the Radical Party, it reminds me Hands Off Saddam," replied the Minister, then added: "The European Union called for Assad referral to the International Criminal Court, and at this stage of the dialogue, the European voice will find its way."
"It is not the government's position," replied Bonino to a question on the proposal to ban the drones made by the Secretary of Hands Off Cain, Sergio D'Elia, who has denounced the use of drones as assimilable to "extrajudicial executions", which cause victims mostly civilians, including American ones.
D'Elia said he hoped that the issue of drones is being treated as other weapons of mass destruction. (Sources: ANSA, Adnkronos, 13/09/2013)