The Congress was held inside the “Due Palazzi Prison”

THE FIFTH CONGRESS OF HANDS OFF CAIN. ELECTED BODIES AND GENERAL MOTION

December 20, 2013: The Fifth Congress of Hands off Cain ended today with the election of governing bodies and the approval of the general motion. The congress, held in conjunction with "Restricted Horizons" inside the “Due Palazzi Prison” in Padua in the twentieth anniversary of the founding of Hands Off Cain, confirmed Marco Pannella as President, Sergio D’Elia as Secretary, and Elisabetta Zamparutti  as treasurer.
Oncologist Umberto Veronesi accepted the Honorary Presidency of Hands Off Cain.
The congress, that had as theme "No to the death penalty and to the penalty unto death”, has approved a general motion that identifies the objectives of the struggle for the 2014-2015 period.
At the international level, the motion of the Congress commits the governing bodies to intensify lobbying aimed at obtaining other support to the new pro-moratorium Resolution to be voted in the UN General Assembly in 2014.
Hands Off Cain claims for the new text to be reinforced with a request to appoint a UN special envoy with the task to overcome the "state secrets" on the death penalty still in force in many countries, secrecy that causes a great number of executions.
The Congress has also decided to strengthen the front of the initiatives of international non-cooperation in the practice of the death penalty through a new campaign to stop the financial contribution of governments to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.  The UN agency runs programs to combat drug trafficking in countries such as Iran, Pakistan and Vietnam, where hundreds of people were sentenced to death and executed in recent years for non-violent crimes related to drugs.
As for initiatives in Italy, Hands Off Cain stressed the importance of the "Christmas March for Amnesty" sponsored by the Radicals on 25 December in Rome, seeking to obtain a broad measure of amnesty and pardon to interrupt the violations of both European and Italian laws, such as the unreasonable length of proceedings and inhuman and degrading treatment in prisons.
To this end, the Congress of Hands Off Cain has relaunched the Formal Notice to Fulfill, which was signed by Marco Pannella and the lawyer Giuseppe Rossodivita and sent to all parties responsible for the Administration of Justice and Prisons in Italy, which calls for a sort of moratorium on executions of the sentences and illegal detentions in Italy.
Hands Off Cain has decided, finally, to take initiatives, also in Italian and European courts, designed to erase the stigma of the "never ending punishment" of those sentenced to life imprisonment, beginning from the so called “ergastolo ostativo” which is a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Such “ergastolo ostativo” excludes any kind of alternative penalty even after 26 years of jail, or after having gone through the super-max regime of “article 41 bis”, a level of detention a detainee can leave only accepting to cooperate with prosecutors, a kind of cooperation that is often considered “authentic” only when the inmate’s life and that of his family is endangered.
Justice Minister Annamaria Cancellieri could not intervene, having been called in the House to refer about an escape. The minister has sent a message to Congress in which she reiterated her action plan to humanize prison conditions in our country.