TUNISIA: RIGHTS GROUP CALLS FOR ABOLISHING DEATH PENALTY

September 26, 2014: A Tunisian human rights group has urged the country's incoming parliament to abolish capital punishment after a new constitution – endorsed earlier this year – kept the practice in place.
"All groups that oppose the death penalty will rally to urge the incoming parliament to abolish it so that we might follow in the footsteps of other nations that have scrapped the practice, including Djibouti, the first Arab country to do so," Habib Marsit, who chairs the Tunisian Coalition against the Death Penalty, told Anadolu Agency.
Marsit's remarks were made on the sidelines of a regional conference held in Tunis under the banner, "Towards the Abolishment of Death Penalty."
The activist lashed out at President Moncef Marzouki and Constituent Assembly head Mustapha Ben Jafar, saying neither dared raise the issue during the drafting process of the new constitution, which, Marsit claimed, due to "narrow political interests."
Since being established in 2007, the coalition has called for scrapping capital punishment in Tunisia. (Sources: World Bulletin/News Desk, 26/09/2014)